Dmitri Borgmann
| Dmitri Borgmann | |
|---|---|
.png)
Borgmann in a 1964 portrait by Jeff Lowenthal
|
|
| Born |
Dmitri Alfred Borgmann October 22, 1927 Berlin, Weimar Republic |
| Died | December 7, 1985 (aged 58) Dayton, Washington, US |
| Known for | Logology |
Dmitri A. Borgmann (October 22, 1927 – December 7, 1985) was a German-American author best known for his work in recreational linguistics.
Borgmann was born on October 22, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, to Hans and Lisa Borgmann. Fearing that the Nazi government would discover Lisa's Jewish ancestry, the family fled to the United States in 1936, and settled in Chicago. Borgmann graduated from the University of Chicago and found work as an actuary; in 1964 he quit this job to focus on his writing. In 1971 he started his own research and manuscript writing business, INTELLEX, which employed up to 15 writers at a time to ghost-write and edit short stories, academic books, and TV and movie scripts. Borgmann eventually relocated the company and his family to Dayton, Washington.
Borgmann first attracted media attention for his skill with words in 1958, when over the course of eight weeks he defeated 22 challengers in a row on WGN-TV's It's In The Name, winning nearly $3,800. Around this time he also started contributing word puzzles and trivia to "Line o' Type or Two", a column in the Chicago Tribune. Much of this material was mined from back issues of The Enigma, the official journal of the National Puzzlers' League which he had joined in 1956. By 1964 he had established himself as "the country's leading authority on word play", a designation he continued to hold up until the time of his death.
His first book, Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities, was published by Scribner's in 1965, and received critical acclaim from major magazines and literary journals, including Time and Scientific American. Today it is best remembered for popularizing the word logology to refer to the field of recreational linguistics; Borgmann himself is often referred to now as the "Father of Logology".
...
Wikipedia