Юрий Валентинович Кнорозов

Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov (alternatively Knorosov; Russian: Юрий Валентинович Кнорозов) was a Soviet and Russian linguist, epigrapher, and ethnographer. He became the founder of the Soviet school of Mayan studies, and his identification of the existence of syllabic signs proved an essential step forward in the eventual decipherment of the Mayan script, the writing system used by the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica.