Background
Aleksandr Matveyev was born in Sverdlovsk but because of the World World War II he entered and graduated from the Khabarovsk University.
Aleksandr Matveyev was born in Sverdlovsk but because of the World World War II he entered and graduated from the Khabarovsk University.
Far East State Humanitarian University.
Starting in 1952 he worked at the Ural State University in Sverdlovsk. Since 1961 – chief of the chair of Russian language and general linguistics at the Ural State University. In 1988 he received the title of Scientist Emeritus of Russia.
Being the chief of the annual dialectological and toponimical expeditions he contributed to the creation of a huge collection of toponyms of the Northern part of Russia.
His study of this material revealed a great number of substrate phenomena from Uralic languages and extended our knowledge of the formal and semantical development of toponyms as well as of the ancient state of the Uralic languages. He is noted for his work in advancing Slavic etymology in both scholarly and popular domains.
He was also the head of a large group of linguists known as Ural school of onomastics.
In 1970 he defended his second thesis (Russian degree of doctor nauk) and became professor of the philological department.
In 1991 he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.