Complex sentence: Max Vasmer (1886--1962) was a Russian-born German linguist who studied problems of etymology of Indo-European, Finno-Ugrian and Turkic languages and worked on history of Slavic, Baltic, Iranian, and Finno-Ugrian peoples in Eastern Europe.
Split into simpler sentences: Max Vasmer (1886--1962) was a Russian-born German linguist. He has studied problems of etymology of Indo-European, Finno-Ugrian and Turkic languages and worked on history of Slavic, Baltic, Iranian, and Finno-Ugrian peoples in Eastern Europe.