Shoqan Walikhanov

Shokan Shyngysuly Walikhanov was a Kazakh scholar, ethnographer, historian and participant in the Great Game. His reputation "as the father of modern Kazakh history and ethnography" is recorded in the Historical Dictionary of Kazakhstan. The Kazakh Academy of Sciences became the Ch.Ch. Valikhanov Kazakh Academy of Sciences in 1960. English-language texts sometimes give his name as "Chokan Valikhanov", based on a transliteration of the Russian spelling that he used himself.