Georgios Nicolaou Hatzidakis, aka Georgios Nikolaou Chatzidakis ( el, Γεώργιος Νικολάου Χατζιδάκις; , in Myrthios,

Ottoman Crete The island of Crete ( ota, گریت ''Girīt'') was declared an Ottoman province ( eyalet) in 1646, after the Ottomans managed to conquer the western part of the island as part of the Cretan War, but the Venetians maintained their hold on the ...

– 28 June 1941, in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates a ...

) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...

, who is regarded as the father of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

in Greece. He was the first chair of Linguistics and Indian Philology at the

University of Athens The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; el, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών, ''Ethnikó ke Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the Univers ...

in 1890–1923.

Life and work

His family was traditionally part of the Cretan revolts against the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University ...

. His grandfather Kyriakos had taken part as a captain in the uprising of 1821. After his schooling at Rethymno, Georgios at the age of 18 fought himself by the side of his father in the uprising of 1866. After a three-year school visit in Athens, Chatzidakis was enrolled at the faculty of philosophy of the

for classical philology. In 1877, he won in a university competition a scholarship for linguistics study in Germany, which he pursued afterwards at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December ...

with

Georg Curtius Georg Curtius (April 16, 1820August 12, 1885) was a German philologist and distinguished comparativist. Biography Curtius was born in Lübeck, and was the brother of the historian and archeologist Ernst Curtius. After an education at Bonn and ...

and

Karl Brugmann Karl Brugmann (16 March 1849 – 29 June 1919) was a German linguist. He is noted for his work in Indo-European linguistics. Biography He was educated at the universities of Halle and Leipzig. He taught at the gymnasium at Wiesbaden and at Lei ...

. Since then, Chatzidakis remained in contact with German researchers, as for example the more than 15 years his junior Albert Thumb ( de) whose obituary he later wrote. After his return to Greece, Chatzidakis was first a grammar school teacher in Athens and was conferred a doctorate the next year with a thesis entitled ''Συμβολή εις την Ιστορίαν της Ελληνικής Γλώσσης'' ("Contribution to the History of the Greek Language") at the university there.

Sources

CV at UoA.gr
1843 births 1941 deaths People from Rethymno (regional unit) Academic staff of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Members of the Academy of Athens (modern) Greek philologists Grand Commanders of the Order of the Phoenix (Greece) Linguists from Greece Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences 19th-century Greek people 20th-century Greek people {{greece-bio-stub