Vuk Karadžić

Born 6 November 1787, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić became a philologist, anthropologist, and linguist who reformed modern Serbian more thoroughly than perhaps any single figure has reshaped a language. He founded multiple Serbian academic disciplines and contributed significantly to historiography. He collected and preserved folktales that became the backbone of a national literature, compiled the first Serbian dictionary in his reformed language, and translated the New Testament into the new spelling and form. His scholarship traveled: Jacob Grimm and Goethe knew his name, and historian Leopold von Ranke relied on Karadžić as the primary source for "The Serbian Revolution," published in 1829. He died 7 February 1864, having given a people the tools to write themselves.