Otto Dempwolff

Otto Dempwolff (1871 to 1938) was a German physician who became the founder of the comparative study of the Austronesian languages. Trained as a doctor, he served as a medical officer in the German colonies of German New Guinea and German East Africa, and it was during that service that he began his linguistic research. Mentored by Carl Meinhof, he built an academic career at the Hamburg Colonial Institute, which later became part of the University of Hamburg, and in 1931 he founded its seminar for Indonesian and South Sea languages, which he headed until his death. His medical training also earned him a seat on the Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission, set up to record the languages of prisoners held in German camps during the First World War. His major work, a comparative phonology of Austronesian vocabularies published from 1934 to 1937, was the first systematic reconstruction of the Proto-Austronesian sound system and word stock.