Stefan Stoianov Mladenov

Born Dec. 15, 1880, in Vidin, Bulgaria; died May 1, 1963, in Sofia. Bulgarian linguist. Member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1929). Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1929) and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1931).

Mladenov graduated from the University of Sofia in 1902 and pursued specialized studies in Vienna (1903–04). St. Petersburg and Prague (1904–05), and Paris (1911–12). In 1905 he received his doctorate from the University of Prague; from 1921 to 1947 he was a professor at the University of Sofia.

Mladenov’s principal works deal with the history of Bulgarian (History of Bulgarian, 1929), Slavic and Indo-European studies, and general linguistics (Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, 1936; Introduction to General Linguistics, 1927, 2nd enl. ed., 1943). He also compiled An Etymological and Orthographical Dictionary of Literary Bulgarian (1941). Mladenov consistently opposed the racist distortions of the history of Indo-European languages and peoples. He was awarded the Dimitrov Prize in 1950.