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 vo…