Georgy Klimov

Who was Georgy Klimov?

Georgy Klimov was a Russian linguist and a leading specialist of the Caucasian languages. His interest primarily focused on the Kartvelian linguistics, but also encompassed Burushaski and "Amerind" languages.

Born in Leningrad, Klimov graduated from the Leningrad State University in 1952. From 1954 onward, he worked for the Institute of Linguistics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, becoming a professor there in 1988. He died in Moscow in 1997, leaving behind over 360 scholarly works and many projects uncompleted. Of these, Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages – a result of Klimov’s lifetime research – was published in 1998, and remains the best work in the comparative linguistics of Kartvelian languages.