Alo Raun

Alo Raun (8 May 1905 – 14 June 2004) was an Estonian linguist whose work focused on Finno-Ugric languages, Turkic languages, and the Estonian language. After teaching at the University of Tartu and the Baltic University in postwar Germany, he spent most of his later academic career at Indiana University Bloomington, where he was professor of linguistics from 1952 to 1975.

Early life and education Raun was born in Tartu on 8 May 1905. He completed the Hugo Treffner Gymnasium cum laude in 1924 and entered the University of Tartu the same year. He earned a doctorate from the University of Tartu in 1942 with a dissertation on comparison in the Finno-Ugric languages, defended during the German occupation of Estonia.

He left Estonia in 1944 and from 1946 to 1949 taught at the Baltic University in Pinneberg, near Hamburg.

After moving to the United States in 1949, Raun came to Indiana University Bloomington in 1951 on a Guggenheim Fellowship and joined the faculty in 1952. In 1960–1961 he held a Fulbright research grant at the University of Helsinki.

Scholarship Raun published in Finno-Ugric and Turkic linguistics as well as general linguistics. Raun's Eesti keele etümoloogiline teatmik has also been noted as an early concise etymological reference work on Estonian; Sven-Erik Soosaar wrote that it gave, in highly compressed form, the origin of a word together with a few cognates.

Paul Alvre's obituary for Raun credited him with helping to make Bloomington an acknowledged center for teaching and research in Finno-Ugric languages. In 2001 he received the Order of the White Star, 2nd Class, from the President of Estonia.

His standing within the field was also reflected in the publication of the festschrift Studies in Finno-Ugric Linguistics: In Honor of Alo Raun in 1977 and the bibliographic volume Alo Raun: Bibliography in 1980. Indiana University later established the Alo Raun Prize for student excellence in Estonian and/or Finnish studies.

Selected works Raun's better-known publications include the following: The Mordva (1955) Introduction to Estonian Linguistics (with Andrus Saareste, 1965) Basic Course in Uzbek (1969) Essays in Finno-Ugric and Finnic Linguistics (1971; 2nd ed. 2004) Eesti keele etümoloogiline teatmik (1982; 2nd ed. 2000)