| Birth Date: | 9 August 1857 |
| Birth Place: | Basel, Switzerland |
| Death Place: | Bonn, Nazi Germany |
| Nationality: | Swiss |
| Known For: | Thurneysen's law, Thurneysen–Havet's law |
| Fields: | linguistics, comparative linguistics, Celtic languages |
Eduard Rudolf Thurneysen (March 14, 1857 - 9 August 1940) was a Swiss linguist and Celticist.
Born in Basel, Thurneysen studied classical philology in Basel, Leipzig, Berlin and Paris. His teachers included Ernst Windisch and Heinrich Zimmer.[1] He received his promotion (approximating to a doctorate) in 1879 and his habilitation, in Latin and the Celtic languages, followed at the University of Jena in 1882.
From 1885 to 1887 he taught Latin at Jena, then taking up the Chair of Comparative Philology at the University of Freiburg[1] where he replaced Karl Brugmann, a renowned expert in Indo-European studies.
In 1896, he posited Thurneysen's law, a proposed sound law concerning the alternation of voiced and voiceless fricatives in certain affixes in Gothic; it was later published in 1898.[2]
In 1909 Thurneysen published his, translated into English as A Grammar of Old Irish by D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin, and still in print as of 2006. A version in Welsh was produced by Melville Richards and published by Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru (University of Wales Press) in 1935 under the title Llawlyfr Hen Wyddeleg.[3] In 1913 he moved to the University of Bonn. It is in this period that Thurneysen has been called the greatest living authority on Old Irish.
He retired in 1923 and died in Bonn in 1940. The Rudolf Thurneysen Memorial Lecture (German: Vortrag in Memoriam Rudolf Thurneysen), given at Bonn, is named in his honour.