Alexandru Rosetti

Alexandru Rosetti (October 20, 1895 – February 27, 1990) was a Romanian linguist, editor, and memoirist.

Born in Bucharest, his parents were Petre Rosetti Bălănescu, a lawyer and landowner, and his wife Zoe (née Cornescu), whose father wrote the 1874 Manualul vânătorului, prefaced with Pseudo-cynegeticos by Alexandru Odobescu. He attended primary school in Câmpulung, followed by his native city's Gheorghe Lazăr High School, from which he graduated in 1914. Between 1916 and 1920, he studied at the literature faculty of the University of Bucharest. His time there was interrupted by World War I: sent to the front, he was wounded in 1917 during the Battle of Mărășești. His professors included Ovid Densusianu, Ioan Bianu, , and Dimitrie Onciul. His first published work appeared in 1920 upon graduation; titled "Colindele religioase la români", the study was published in Analele Academiei Române. Memoriile secțiunii literare. On scholarship in Paris from 1920 to 1928, he first attended the École pratique des Hautes Études, completing the program with a 1924 thesis on rhotacism in Romanian. He went on to the Sorbonne, submitting two theses in 1926: one on 16th-century Romanian phonetics, and another on Romanian letters from the late 16th and early 17th centuries in the Bistrița archives. He joined the Romanian Communist Party in 1946, and acquired the nickname of "red boyar". In 1948, under the new communist regime, he was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy. Although an unhesitating adherent to the ruling party—indifferent to a succession of dictatorships, he was primarily concerned with using them to the advantage of his studies—his liberal Europeanism caused him to be excluded from the university between 1951 and 1954, a period of high Stalinism. In 1961, he established the Academy's Center for Phonetic and Dialectological Research, formerly a department within Iorgu Iordan's Institute of Linguistics. He was a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, a corresponding member of the Swedish Academy, and doctor honoris causa of the universities of Montpellier and Aix-Marseille. A man of robust health, the 94-year-old Rosetti suffered a burn accident soon after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Taken to , he continued making plans for the future during his final days.

He married Maria Rallet, of an old boyar family; In 1944, she became vice president of the Democratic Federation of Women of Romania; from 1948, she was president of the Union of Democratic Women of Romania. Rosetti's research center was named after him in 1992. In 2002, it merged with the Iordan institute to form the Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti Institute of Linguistics.