Zoltán Gombocz (18 June 1877 – 2 May 1935) was a Hungarian scholar specializing in

Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th centur ...

, but also in

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

Life and career

Gombocz was born in Ödenburg/Sopron, and spent his early years there, where his father was a professor at an evangelical college. He studied

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

, which also included

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

, under the linguists Josef Szinnyei, August Ph. Becker and also Zsigmund Simonyi at Budapest University, and through them absorbed the principles of the Junggrammatiker. Szinnyei's diplomacy is said to have been decisive in influencing Gombocz's decision to concentrate on languages related to Hungary's historic roots. he obtained his doctorate in 1900. He studied abroad, under the Jesuit linguist Jean-Pierre Rousselot at the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

in Paris, in Germany over 1903/4 in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

where he came under the influence of

Hermann Paul Hermann Otto Theodor Paul (August 7, 1846, Salbke – December 29, 1921, Munich) was a German philologist, linguist and lexicographer. Biography He studied at Berlin and Leipzig, and in 1874 became professor of German language and literature in ...

and

Wilhelm Wundt Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (; ; 16 August 1832 – 31 August 1920) was a German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, one of the fathers of modern psychology. Wundt, who distinguished psychology as a science from philosophy and biology, was t ...

, and in Finland where he mastered Finnish. He took up appointments successively thereafter as Professor of Finno-Ugric languages at Kolozsvár and

Szeged Szeged ( , ; see also #Etymology, other alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county seat ...

, and was appointed

chair A chair is a type of seat, typically designed for one person and consisting of one or more legs, a flat or slightly angled seat and a back-rest. It may be made of wood, metal, or synthetic materials, and may be padded or upholstered in vario ...

of the subject in Budapest in 1921, where he rose to become rector in 1927 of the most prestigious institution of learning in his country,

Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Loránd University (, ELTE, also known as ''University of Budapest'') is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in ...

. Aside from writing a key modern text on Hungarian, ''An Outline of a Historical Hungarian Grammnar'', Gombocz tackled one of the most recondite problems of his discipline the reconstruction of the ancient vowel and vowel-ablaut system of proto-Finno-Ugrian, which, together with the work of his Finnish colleague Eemil Nestor Setälä, put Finno-Ugrian

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

on a firm scientific basis. Together with his friend and colleague János Melich, Gombocz compiled a comprehensive etymological dictionary of Hungarian, the first scientific work of its kind for one of the Finno-Ugrian languages. Gombocz also mastered

Turkology Turkology (or Turcology or Turkic studies) is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and the Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative c ...

and made fundamental contributions to the topic, writing important papers on the analysis of Turkic loan-words into Hungarian.

Death and tributes

Gombocz died of a seizure during a faculty meeting, at the early age of 58, and was mourned by his peers as one of the two outstanding of Finno-Ugric studies of his time, the other being Setälä, who had died earlier in February, the same year.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gombocz, Zoltan 1877 births 1935 deaths Hungarian Finno-Ugrists