Stephen Wurm

Stephen Adolphe Wurm (19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.

Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky, and was christened Istvan Adolphe Wurm. His father died before Stephen was born.

Both his parents were multilingual and Wurm showed an interest in languages from an early age. Attending school in Vienna and travelling to all parts of Europe during his childhood, Wurm spoke roughly nine languages by the time he reached adulthood, a giftr he inherited from his father, who spoke 17. Wurm went on to master upwards of 50 languages.

Wurm grew up stateless, unable to take the nationality of either parent or of his country of residence, Austria. This enabled him to avoid military service and attend university. He studied Turkic languages at the Oriental Institute in Vienna, receiving his doctorate in linguistics and social anthropology in 1944 for a dissertation on the Uzbek language.

In 1946 he married fellow student Helene (Helen) Maria Groeger, a specialist in African ethnography. He taught Altaic linguistics at the University of Vienna until 1951.

After reading some works by S. H. Ray, Wurm became interested in Papuan languages and began a correspondence with the Revd Dr Arthur Capell, lecturer in linguistics at the University of Sydney. Wurm began teaching himself Tok Pisin and Police Motu from books and took up a position in London. In 1954 the Wurms moved to Australia, where Capell had organised for Wurm a post in the Anthropology Department at the University of Sydney. In 1957 the Wurms moved to Canberra where Stephen took up a post as Senior Fellow within the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) at the new Australian National University (ANU). That same year the Wurms received Australian citizenship. From this time on the main focus of Wurm's research was the study of the languages of New Guinea, although he also carried out research on a number of Australian Aboriginal languages. At the Australian National University he was Professor of Linguistics from 1968 to 1987. In tribute to the scholarship of the man, the journal Oceanic Linguistics titled an article on Wurm "Linguist Extraordinaire" (Oceanic Linguistics, 2002.41: 1).

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