Filipp Fortunatov

Filipp Fyodorovich Fortunatov (; – ) was a Russian philologist, Indo-Europeanist and Slavist, best known for establishing the Fortunatov–de Saussure law.

Biography Fortunatov was born in Vologda in 1848. His father was the director of public schools in Olonets Governorate, and Fortunatov entered the in Petrozavodsk, which was also overseen by his father.

Following his father's retirement in 1863, the family moved to Moscow, where Fortunatov continued his studies at the . Fortunatov then entered the Faculty of History and Philology of Imperial Moscow University in 1864. In 1871, Fortunatov and Vsevolod Miller travelled to Suwałki Governorate, where they studied Lithuanian fairy tales and songs. After this trip, Fortunatov was sent abroad to Germany, France and England, spending two years abroad in total between 1871 and 1873. During the trip, Fortunatov attended lectures and also studied the Vedas at the British Museum. After his return to Moscow, Fortunatov completed his Master's degree in 1875. and also elected as an academician at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1912, Fortunatov was made a member of the Board of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. after returning to his dacha from a short walk, Fortunatov fell ill on his bed and died several hours later. He was buried in a local cemetery. Fortunatov's wife, Yulia Ivanovna, remained in Kosalma until her death in 1921, and was buried in the same cemetery. His studies specialized in the phonetics of the Indo-European languages, emphasizing the importance of using a strict historical approach in studying phonetic changes. His works included studies on the Slavic languages, Sanskrit, Vedic Sanskrit, Greek, Armenian, Gothic and Lithuanian. Through the Moscow linguistic circle, Fortunatov had immense influence on the subsequent generation of Russian and foreign linguists, producing distinguished students like Aleksey Shakhmatov, Dmitry Ushakov, Nikolai Durnovo, Olaf Broch, Aleksandar Belić, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Johan August Lundell, Jiří Polívka and J. J. Mikkola. However, his international impact remained small due to his limited written works.

In 1895, Fortunatov published On Stress and Length in the Baltic Languages, where he established a law, now known as Fortunatov–de Saussure's law, related to stress shift in the Baltic and Slavic languages. A street in Petrozavodsk is also named after Fortunatov.