Ladislav Zgusta

Ladislav Zgusta (March 20, 1924 – April 27, 2007) was a Czech-American historical linguist, lexicologist, and lexicographer, who wrote one of the first textbooks on lexicography. After working as a laborer and a railroad employee in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, Zgusta earned several doctorates from Czech universities. Threatened with detention during the Prague Spring, his family escaped to the United States through India while posing as tourists, with assistance from the American embassy in New Delhi and the support of his colleagues in the United States.

Upon his arrival in the United States in 1970, Zgusta found a great deal of assistance from his contemporaries, who helped launch his career there and landed him in a tenured position after less than four years. He held temporary positions at Cornell University and the University of Texas during his first year in the United States, then moved to the University of Illinois that same year; he remained there until his retirement in 1995. During his career, Zgusta was a founding member of the Dictionary Society of North America, serving as its president from 1983 to 1985.

An accomplished polyglot, Zgusta published articles in at least ten different languages and reviewed publications written in at least eight more. Over the course of sixty years, he published nearly 650 reviews of academic works. He remained a highly-decorated academic and member of several national academic societies throughout his career. Following two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1977 and 1983, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the Gold Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 1992.