The scientist elevated Ukrainian studies to the level of world science, being an intellectual leader in entrenching the prestige of Ukrainian humanities abroad
Taisija Sydorchuk, historian
Omeljan Pritsak was a world-class scholar in the fields of philology, linguistics, oriental studies, and history, as well as the founder and the first director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (USA) and the A. Krymsky Institute of Oriental Studies (Ukraine).
Omeljan Pritsak was born on April 7, 1919, in the village of Luka in the Lviv region into a family of a railroad worker. In 1940, he graduated from the University of Lviv. He studied at the graduate school of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union under the guidance of Ahatanhel Krymsky. During the Second World War, he ended up in Germany. He continued his studies at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen. He obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1948 and taught at universities in Germany, England, and Poland.
Since 1961, he lived and worked in the United States and was the Head of the Department of Altaic Studies, Turkic Studies, and Eurasian History at the University of Washington (Seattle, 1961–1964), as well as the Professor of General Linguistics and Turkic Studies at Harvard University (Boston, 1964–1990). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, O. Pritsak’s project led to the establishment of three departments of Ukrainian studies at Harvard University—history, linguistics, and literary studies, all of which were funded by Ukrainian immigrants. The scholar founded and headed the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University (1973–1990), which supported research and dissemination of knowledge about Ukraine. He was one of the founders of the International Association of Ukrainian Studies (1989, Naples, Italy). For 60 years he collaborated with the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences.
After the restoration of Ukraine’s independence, O. Pritsak returned to Ukraine upon the invitation of the chairman of the NASU, Borys Paton. He founded and headed the A. Krymsky Institute of Oriental Studies (1991–1996), participated in the creation of the Institute of Ukrainian Archaeography and Source Studies of the National Academy of Sciences.
He is the author of about a thousand works on history, linguistics, orientalism, etc., as well as the founder of a number of academic journals, including Recenzija and Harvard Ukrainian Studies. Among his students were Oleksandr Halenko, Zenon Kohut, Frank Sysyn, and Orest Subtelny.
Omeljan Pritsak died on May 29, 2006, in Boston (USA).
