Alexander Piatigorsky

Alexander Moiseyevich Piatigorsky
Alexander Piatigorsky in 2009
Born	(1929-01-30)January 30, 1929 Moscow, Soviet Union
Died	October 25, 2009(2009-10-25) (aged 80) London
Era	Contemporary
Region	Soviet Union, Great Britain
Main interests	South Asian philosophy and culture, semiotics

Alexander Moiseyevich Piatigorsky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Моисе́евич Пятиго́рский; 30 January 1929, Moscow – 25 October 2009, London) was a Soviet dissident,Russian philosopher, scholar of South Asian philosophy and culture, historian, philologist, semiotician, writer. Well-versed in the study of language, he knew Sanskrit, Tamil, Pali, Tibetan, German, Russian, French, Italian and English. In an obituary appearing in the English-language newspaper The Guardian, he was cited as "a man who was widely considered to be one of the more significant thinkers of the age and Russia's greatest philosopher." On Russian television stations he was mourned as "the greatest Russian philosopher."

Piatigorsky was born in Moscow. His father, Moshe, an engineer and lecturer at the Stalin metallurgical college was sent to a weapons production facility in the Urals (city of Nizhny Tagil) at the outbreak of World War II, where he took up a post as chief engineer in weapons production. Alexander worked in the plant during the war. Being a poor student of mathematics, chemistry and physics, Alexander was expelled from school twice, but at this time he learned Latin and some other languages out of sheer curiosity. He was an avaricious reader, and read just about everything he could get his hands on.

At Moscow State University he studied philosophy, graduating in 1951. He moved to Stalingrad where he taught high-school history before returning to Moscow to join the Institute of Oriental Studies as "a specialist in Tamil languages and Hindu studies." He compiled the first Russian-Tamil dictionary in 1960. In 1963, influenced by Yuri Lotman who was working in Tartu University, he was involved with Lotman, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov and others, in the establishment of Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School. The School developed the theoretical foundations and nomenclature for a new approach in semiotics for the study of society, consciousness and culture.