Hattala, Martin

Born Nov. 4, 1821, in Trstená; died Dec. 11, 1903, in Prague. Slovak linguist; professor at Charles University in Prague (beginning in 1854). Corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He was the author of Grammar of the Slovak Language (1850), the first work of its kind, which played a significant role in the standardization of the Slovak literary language (based on the central Slovak dialect). He was also concerned with questions relating to the Czech literary language.