Emil Petrovici

Born Apr. 4, 1899, in Tovakul-Mik, Yugoslavia; died Oct. 7, 1968. Rumanian linguist. Academician of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Rumania (1948).

Petrovici studied at the University of Cluj from 1919 and at the Sorbonne. He became a professor at the University of Cluj in 1935 and served as the university’s rector from 1946 to 1951. He was president of the Cluj branch of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Rumania from 1948 to 1956 and president of the academy’s section of philological sciences from 1966. He worked at the University of Sofia in 1930 and 1931, at the University of Bucharest from 1956 to 1958, and at the M. Gorky Russian Language Institute in 1956 and 1957.

Petrovici became a member of the International Committee of Slavists in 1955 and served as president of the Association of Slavists of the Socialist Republic of Rumania in 1956. He became editor in chief of the journals Cercetări de lingvistică in 1956 and Romanoslavica in 1958. Petrovici collected a wealth of material on Rumanian dialects and on all the dialects of the national minorities in Rumania and helped compile the Rumanian Linguistic Atlas (1929-39). He wrote works on Rumanian dialectology and linguistic geography, the history of the Rumanian language and people, phonetics and phonology, onomastics, Slavo-Rumanian linguistic relationships, and Slavic dialectology.