Vladimir Moisseyevitch Leitchik (06-11-1928 – 23-07-2013)

244 Serguey Shelov, Larissa Manerko | Vladimir Moisseyevitch Leitchik | (06-11-1928 – 23-07-2013) Vladimir Moisseyevitch Leitchik (06-11-1928 – 23-07-2013) The Russian linguistic science lost a well-known specialist in philology, lexicology and terminological science — Vladimir Moisseyevitch Leitchik, who passed away on 23 July, 2013. It’s difficult to write about him in the past, because he is among us — his colleagues, students, scientists and teachers. Vladimir Moisseyetch Leitchik was a brilliant student, who graduated from the Department of Romanic languages at Lomonossov Moscow State University. He was a broad-minded person interested in cultural studies, cognitive linguistics, terminology science and the theory for languages of special purposes. Being a real philologist on his path he got acquainted with many new sides of philological endeavor: he taught French and Russian, worked as an interpreter, read courses in linguistic history, Russian culture and foundations of terminology studies. The technical translation brought him to the main stream of his whole life, to which he devoted more than 50 years – these are investigations and practical work with scientific and terminological data. Thanks to him this domain of linguistic and lexicological knowledge became a separate scientific discipline. It is necessary to admit that he was the leading Russian expert in practical and theoretical issues of terminology, who created an original conception of this scientific sphere. The key idea of his theoretical meta-language was the understanding of the term as a complex language unit for special purposes based on three layers including a natural language substratum, logical substratum and a purely terminological nature of the lexeme. All these layers are revealed in formal, content and functional structure of a term. The theory of Vladimir Leitchik is an answer to many issues of modern terminology. They touch the nature of terminology as a science, its theoretical and applied subdivisions, the difference between terminology and terminological systems, terminology and nomenclature, the formation and usage of terminological methods, basic principles of the normative work with scientific and terminological lexicon, and others. The book by 245Terminologija | 2013 | 20 Leitchik Terminology: its subject, methods and structure republished many times became a classical scholarly work describing the terminological sphere. It’s difficult to find a modern scientific paper, in which the surname of Leitchik is not mentioned or his monograph is not cited. Vladimir Leitchik showed the path of great science to many young researchers being a scientific advisor, official opponent at dissertation defense, or a reviewer of their research papers. We want to mark his participation in the scientific preparation of specialists not only from Moscow, but also from various parts of Russia. Among his students (and now they are Doctors of Philology and full professors) there are scholars from Krasnoyarsk, Nijniy Novgorod, Perm, Pyatigorsk, Saratov, Tjumen and other cities. He made every effort to popularize science. One of the most notable popular science books devoted to lexicology and terminology is called People and words (Люди и слова). This volume can be recommended to pupils of senior classes at school and university students to get acquainted with lexical problems of technical and professional character. We should say that he was a unique person, who stood for the prestige of Soviet and later Russian science abroad. He took an active part in the preparation and publication of articles of Russian and Ukrainian authors in English and German, it appeared as Russian terminology science (1992–2002) in Vienna in 2004. This collection of works represents Russian and Ukranian terminology science to a great extent. Vladimir Leitchik was a full member of Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (РАЕН) and was awarded by international and Russian organizations. He took part in a number of Russian and international conferences. His name is known not only in Russia, but far away its borders. His full life ended, but a scientific immortality begins: his papers, scientific ideas and results will stay with us forever. Gauta 2013-11-06 Serguey Shelov Dr. of Sciences in Philology, Leading Researcher, Head of Terminology Centre, Institute for Russian Language, Russian Academy of Sciences Larissa Manerko Dr. of Sciences in Philology, Full Professor, Head of Chair of the Theory and Practice of the English language at the Department of High School of Translation and Interpretation at Lomonossov Moscow State University