Vilhelm Thomsen

Vilhelm Thomsen

Vilhelm Ludwig Peter Thomsen (January 25, 1842 – May 12, 1927) was a Danish linguist and Turkologist. In 1893, he deciphered the Turkish Orkhon inscriptions in advance of his rival, Wilhelm Radloff. He also studied the origins of Russian and Finnish.

According to an article on "The history of Uralic linguistics" by Bo Wickman (1988:808),

The Danish scholar Vilhelm Thomsen (1842-1927) was one of the greatest linguists of all times. He was active in an astoundingly great number of linguistic disciplines, and he was equally masterful in all of them.

He is honored on a stela set up in central Copenhagen along with three other Danish pioneers of modern linguistics, Rasmus Rask, N.L. Westergaard, and Karl Verner.

A street is named after him in Ankara, Turkey, Wilhelm Thomsen Caddesi (= 'Vilhelm Thomsen Street'), on which the National Library of Turkey is located. This is apparently because Thomsen's deciphering of the Orkhon inscriptions was perceived as an important contribution during the formative period of modern Turkish national identity at the turn of the 20th century.

Bibliography

• Brøndal, Viggo. 1927. "L'œuvre de Vilhelm Thomsen." Acta philologica scandinavica 2:289-318. København.

• Wickman, Bo. 1988. "The history of Uralic linguistics." In The Uralic Languages: Description, History and Foreign Influences, edited by Denis Sinor. Leiden: Brill.

Selected publications

• The relations between ancient Russia and Scandinavia and the origin of the Russian state. Three lectures delivered at the Taylor Institution, Oxford, in May, 1876, in accordance with the terms of Lord Ilchester's bequest to the University
• Inscriptions De L'Orkhon Dechiffrees
• Ueber den Einfluss der germanischen Sprachen auf die finnisch-lappischen. Eine sprachgeschichtliche Untersuchung