Vilhelm Thomsen

Vilhelm Thomsen
Vilhelm Ludwig Peter Thomsen (25 January 1842 – 12 May 1927) was a Danish linguist and Turkologist. He successfully deciphered the Orkhon inscriptions which were discovered during the expedition of Nikolai Yadrintsev in 1889.
Early life and education
Vilhelm Thomsen was born in Copenhagen. He was the son of Chamber Councillor (kammerråd) Ludvig Frederik Thomsen and the elder brother of painter and illustrator Carl Thomsen (1847–1912).
He studied at the University of Copenhagen in 1859, graduating in 1867 and earning a PhD in 1869 with a dissertation on Germanic loanwords in Finnic.
Career
He taught Greek at the Borgerdyd school in Copenhagen before becoming a professor at the University of Copenhagen;
From 1875 he was an associate professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, and in 1887 he was appointed professor.
In 1876 he was invited to give the Ilchester Lectures at the University of Oxford, which were later published as The Relations Between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia, and the Origin of the Russian State.
Thomsen made a number of important contributions to linguistics, including his work on the Germanic, Baltic, and Indo-Iranian influences on Finnic. In 1893, he deciphered the Turkic Orkhon inscriptions in advance of Russian linguist Wilhelm Radloff (1837–1918).
Vilhelm Thomsen first published the translation in French in 1899. He then published another interpretation in Danish in 1922 with a more complete translation.
According to an article on "The history of Uralic linguistics" by Bo Wickman (1988:808),
The Danish scholar Vilhelm Thomsen (1842–1927) was one of the greatest linguists of all times. He was active in an astoundingly great number of linguistic disciplines, and he was equally masterful in all of them.
Personal life
Thomsen married Karen Charlotte Allen (22 August 1852 – 15 August 1934), a daughter of historian C.F. Allen (1811–71) and Ide Marie Dorph (1812–1910), on 5 May 1876 in Frederiksberg.
He died on 12 May 1927 in Copenhagen and is buried in Solbjerg Park Cemetery.
Honours
In 1912 he received membership of the Order of the Elephant.
Thomsen is honored on a stela set up in central Copenhagen along with three other Danish pioneers of modern linguistics; Rasmus Rask, Niels Ludvig Westergaard and Karl Verner.
Thomsen was President of the Danish Academy from 1909 until his death, and was an honorary member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
Wilhelm Thomsen Caddesi is a street that is named after him in Ankara, Turkey, on which the National Library of Turkey is located.
Selected publications
The relations between ancient Russia and Scandinavia and the origin of the Russian state. Three lectures delivered at the Taylor Institution, Oxford, in May, 1876, in accordance with the terms of Lord Ilchester's bequest to the university
1896: Inscriptions De L'Orkhon Déchiffrées
On the influence of the Germanic languages on the Finnish-Lappish
See also
Old Turkic script
References
Sources
Brøndal, Viggo. 1927. "L'œuvre de Vilhelm Thomsen." Acta philologica scandinavica 2:289–318. København.
Wickman, Bo. 1988. "The history of Uralic linguistics." In The Uralic Languages: Description, History and Foreign Influences, edited by Denis Sinor. Leiden: Brill.
Balticists
Linguists from Denmark
Linguists of Turkic languages
1842 births
1927 deaths
University of Copenhagen alumni
Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Corresponding Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1917–1925)
Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)
Rectors of the University of Copenhagen
Paleolinguists
Linguists of Indo-Uralic languages