Vilhelm Thomsen

Vilhelm Ludvig Peter Thomsen was born in Copenhagen on January 25, 1842. Appointed Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Copenhagen in 1887, Thomsen mastered Finno-Ugric, Baltic, Slavic, and Altaic language families.

In December 1893, Thomsen accomplished one of the greatest decipherment triumphs in linguistic history: decoding the mysterious 8th-century runic inscriptions on the monumental stone steles discovered in the Orkhon Valley of Mongolia. He proved they were written in Old Turkic, identifying the words 'Tengri' (Heaven) and 'Türk', unlocking thousands of years of nomadic steppe history.