Omeljan Pritsak (1919-2006) (In Memoriam) (Biography‪)‬

Colleagues, collaborators, and former students throughout the world and in a vast number of related fields will have noted with profound regret and vivid recollection the passing on 29 May 2006 of Omeljan Pritsak, the Mykhailo S. Hrushevs'kyi Professor of Ukrainian History, Emeritus, at Harvard University. Omeljan Pritsak was a man of seemingly inexhaustible energy, broad erudition, and total dedication to scholarship in a broad range of fields. While he will probably be best remembered at Harvard and in the Ukrainian diaspora community as the co-founder and long-time director of Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute, his energy, erudition, and scholarship also found expression in a prodigious output of scholarly work and institution-building in several countries and many scholarly fields. He was founder, editor, or an early stalwart of a number of periodical and monographic series, first in Germany, then in this country, and, ultimately, in his native Ukraine: the Ural-altaische Jahrbucher, which began in Wiesbaden in 1952 as a continuation of Ungarische Jahrbucher; (1) the Ural-altaische Bibliothek, (2) a continuation of Ungarische Bibliothek; the first (1959) volume of Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta; (3) and Skhidnyi svit/The World of the Orient (Kiev, 1993-), continuing the earlier (1927-31) Skhidnyi svit, founded by his teacher Ahatanhel Iukhymovych Kryms'kyi (1871-1942). In 1977, Pritsak helped to launch Harvard Ukrainian Studies, which has become a leading journal in its field, and a number of other series. His prodigious range and productivity is only partially captured by the published bibliographies of his works. (4) The task of completing his bibliography lies ahead, and may well be beyond the reach of any single colleague.