Prof. Monica Partridge born Monica Agnes McMain (25 May 1915 – 2008) was a British linguist and

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

and

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...

scholar who was a benefactor to the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

. She was the first woman to be a Professor at her university.

Life

Partridge was born on 25 May 1915 in

Nottingham Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robi ...

to Florence Emma Marjorie born Roberts and John McMain. Her father was a teacher. She studied French at Nottingham University but later became intrigued by Russian. She began to study Russian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, in 1940. She undertook post graduate studies with Professor Simon Boyanus and won the Laura Soames Prize for her study of the

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

of Russian. Partridge did some (assistant) lecturing at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = � ...

. After the war in 1947 she worked at her alma mater as a tutorial assistant. She was encouraged by

Janko Lavrin Janko Lavrin (10 February 1887 – 13 August 1986) was a Slovene novelist, poet, cri