Ilya Gershevitch

Birth Year 1914

DEATH DATE 2001 in Cambridge, (87 years old)

Nationality Iran

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1914

Ilya Gershevitch (1914 in Zürich – 2001 in Cambridge) was a noted Iranologist.

Gershevitch was born to Russian parents fleeing from Germany to Switzerland at the outbreak of World War I.

1933

He enrolled in the University of Rome in 1933, and moved to England in 1938.

1948

In 1948, he became the first holder of a new Lectureship in Iranian Studies at Cambridge University.

1967

He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1967 and later a corresponding member of both the Accademia dei Lincei and the Russian Academy.

1971

In 1971 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Berne.

His work includes pioneering studies of the Bashkardi dialect, the decipherment of Bactrian, besides contributions to Sogdian and Avestan philology, Ossetic, Elamite and Zoroastrian studies and Achaemenid history.