Vyacheslav Ivanov (philologist)

Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov
Ivanov at the 6 Moscow International Book Festival, 2011
Native name	Вячеслав Всеволодович Иванов
Born	(1929-08-21) 21 August 1929 (age 87) Moscow, Soviet Union
Citizenship	Soviet Union (1929–1991)→ Russia (1991–present)
Nationality	Russian
Fields	philology, semiotics, linguistics
Institutions	Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia; Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia; University of California, Los Angeles, California; Stanford University, Stanford, California; Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Alma mater	Moscow State University
Notable awards	Lenin Prize, the USSR State Prize

Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (Russian: Вячесла́в Все́володович Ива́нов, born 21 August 1929, Moscow) is a prominent Soviet/Russian philologist and Indo-Europeanist probably best known for his glottalic theory of Indo-European consonantism and for placing the Indo-European urheimat in the area of the Armenian Highlands and Lake Urmia.

Vyacheslav Ivanov's father was Vsevolod Ivanov, one of the most prominent Soviet writers. His mother was an actress who worked in the theatre of Vsevolod Meyerhold. His childhood was clouded by disease and war, which he spent in Tashkent evacuation.

Ivanov was educated at Moscow University and worked there until 1958, when he was fired on account of his sympathy with Boris Pasternak and Roman Jacobson. By that time, he had made some important contributions to Indo-European studies and became one of the leading authorities on Hittite language.

During the early 1960s, Ivanov was one of the first Soviet scholars to take a keen interest in and develop semiotics. He worked with Vladimir Toporov on several linguistic monographs, including an outline of Sanskrit. In 1962 he joined Toporov and Juri Lotman in establishing the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School.