Tomson, Aleksandr

Tomson, Aleksandr or Thomson [Томсон, Александр], b 15 June 1860 near Dorpat, Estonia, d 27 November 1935 in Odesa. Russian and Ukrainian linguist; corresponding member of the Russian (later USSR) Academy of Sciences from 1910. A graduate of the universities in Saint Petersburg (1882) and Moscow (PH D, 1892), he was a professor of comparative Indo-European grammar and Sanskrit at Odesa University (1897–1920) and the Odesa Institute of People's Education (1920–30). At the university he set up the first laboratory of experimental phonetics in Ukraine. In the Soviet period he was a member of the All-Ukrainian Learned Association of Oriental Studies. He wrote books on Russian syntax and semasiology (1903) and general linguistics (1906; rev edn 1910) and studies on the Sanskrit, Armenian, and Slavic languages, including articles on Ukrainian phonetics.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]