Elvira Gangutia

Born in San Sebastian (Guipúzcoa), moved to Madrid in the mid-1950’s, after a one year stay in the USA. After graduating from Classical Philology by Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1963, she entered CSIC as a collaborator in Greek-Spanish Dictionary initiated by Francisco Rodríguez Adrados, and soon (1971) was promoted researcher in Instituto Antonio de Nebrija. Since 1989, she has been research professor in Instituto de Filología, later on called Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo.

She was one of the first female researchers since CSIC had its own personal scientific staff but, mainly, she has been a pioneering woman in the field of Greek Philology, where there were not university professors until 1980. She has been director at Instituto de Filología and has been a member of the CSIC Humanities Area Commission. In 1982, she was sent by CSIC to the then Soviet Union to visit different linguistic institutes.

Since she began working for CSIC, Elvira Gangutia has combined her own researches with her intense and interrupted dedication to the Greek-Spanish Dictionary, which she has been main researcher between 1987 and 2007. From this work, awarded in 1998 with Aristoteles Prize of Onassis Foundation, seven volumes have been published, currently also an in open internet access. As Greek lexicography and structural semantic expert, she has devoted most of her time to the elaboration of dictionary articles. After her retirement she continues collaborating with the project coming every week to CCHS.

She has combined her dedication to lexicography with research to other fields, such as archaic Greek poetry and Comparative Literature. In this last area, she has discovered very interesting parallels between archaic Greek literature and ancient Oriental texts. She has also produced new contributions, very valued among Hispanists, in the field of the parallel between Classic Literatures and Spanish Medieval and Renaissance Literature, finding traces of Greek poetry in Spanish Medieval poetry or in literature works such as Lazarillo or La Celestina.

One of her most original contributions has been the characterization of the Greek literary genre of women songs, very popular one that reaches its most finished expressions in literature author works, in some woman like Safo and male poets such as Archilochus, Alcaeus and Aristophanes. She has also studied, edited and translated the most ancient Greco-Latin sources about the Spanish Peninsula, collected in one of the volumes of Testimonia Hispanae Antiquia collection. During the last decade she has dealt with some topics further away from ancient texts, but always linked with antiquity, such as the classic training of English travellers in Spain during 18^th and 19^th centuries and Spain Participation in the philhellenic movement that helped from all Europe to Greek liberation.

Helena Rodríguez Somolinos, Institute of Languages ​​and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East, CSIC