About Nikolai Anderson
Nikolai Karl Adolf Anderson (6 October [O.S. 24 September] 1845 – 22 March [O.S. 9 March] 1905) was a Baltic German philologist who lived in the Russian Empire. He specialized in comparative linguistics of Finno-Ugric languages. == Life == Anderson was born in the village of Kulina, Estonia, close to the town of Wesenberg. After receiving a private education in Saint Petersburg he attended the Gouvernements-Gymnasium (Grammar School of the Governorate) in Reval and in 1865 he enrolled in the Imperial University of Dorpat to study philology, where he was a student of Leo Meyer who in the same year had been appointed as the university's professor of Germanistics and Comparative philology. While at university he became interested in Finno-Ugric languages and quickly became an expert in the field. In 1871 Anderson worked as an hourly paid teacher at the Gymnasium in Dorpat before taking up a post as teacher for classical languages at the Gymnasium in Minsk (now in Belarus) in 1872, but he continued his studies of Finno-Ugric languages in his spare time. In 1874, he got married and soon started a family. Nikolai Anderson's three sons were Wilhelm Anderson (born 1880), Walter Anderson (born 1885), and Oskar Anderson (born 1887), who all went on to choose academic careers. In 1876 Anderson submitted the results of his research, comparing Finno-Ugric and Indo-Germanic languages to the University of Tartu, for which he was awarded a degree in Comparative philology. Still working as a teacher in Minsk, he continued his research, and in 1891 he gained a Magister degree in Comparative Linguistics.
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