Jaan Puhvel

Jaan Puhvel (born 24 January 1932) is an Estonian comparative linguist and comparative mythologist who specializes in Indo-European studies.

Born in Estonia, Puhvel fled his country with his family in 1944 following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, and eventually ended up in Canada. Gaining his Ph.D. in comparative linguistics at Harvard University, he became a professor of classical languages, Indo-European studies and Hittite at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he founded the Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology and was Chairman of the Department of Classics.

Puhvel is the founder of the ''Hittite Etymological Dictionary'', and the author and editor of several works on Proto-Indo-European mythology and Proto-Indo-European society. Provided by Wikipedia