Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński

Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński (Polish: [taˈdɛ.uʐ ʑɛˈlij̃skʲi]; Russian: Фадде́й Фра́нцевич Зели́нский, romanized: Faddéy Frántsevich Zelínskiy; September 14, 1859 – May 8, 1944) was a Polish classical philologist, historian, and translator of Sophocles, Euripides and other classical authors into Russian. His most well-known works are Die Gliederung der altattischen Komoedie, Tragodumenon libri tres, and Iresione, the last of which is a collection of essays.

Life and career

He was born on 14 September 1859 in Skrzypczyńce, near Uman in Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine) to father Franciszek and mother Ludwika (née Grudzińska), both of them of Polish descent. Between 1869 and 1876, he attended secondary school in Saint Petersburg and subsequently in the years 1876–1881 he studied in Leipzig, Munich and Vienna. In 1880 he earned his doctorate from the University of Leipzig for his dissertation, Die Gliederung der altattischen Komoedie. He was author of works on the history of ancient Greek culture and religion, classical education, and popularization of classical studies (published largely in Russian and German).

In 1884 he became a professor at the University of St. Petersburg, and following Polish independence he held the chair of Classical Studies at Warsaw University for 17 years (1922–1939) during the interwar period. He was the recipient of honorary doctorates from the Jagiellonian University, Kraków (1930), and twelve western European universities. Between 1933 and 1939 Zieliński was a member of the prestigious Polish Academy of Literature.