Robert Stephen Paul Beekes (ˈbeɪkəs; born in Haarlem

Haarlem

Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...

 in 1937) is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at the University of Leiden and the author of many books about Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...

, the reconstructed parent language of most of the European languages and of the languages of Central Asia and India (includes many of the languages of Iran, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh). One of his more well-known books is Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, a standard handbook on the Proto-Indo-European language. It treats the area of linguistic reconstruction thoroughly, but also features cultural reconstruction and comparative linguistic methods in general.

Professor Beekes is also a leading authority on the Etruscan language

Etruscan language

The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...

 and co-author with L. B. Van der Meer of De Etrusken Spreken Muiderberg: Coutinho, 1991. He advocates the oriental origin

Asia Minor

Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

 theory for the Etruscans:

Currently, Beekes is working at Pre-Greek, the (non-Indo-European) language that was spoken in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 before Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 came in, possibly around 2000 BC. Since this language was not written, Beekes gets his information from words in Classical Greek that clearly show a non-Greek structure and development.

Publications

Some of his notable books are:

• The Development of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Greek (Mouton, 1969)
• The Origins of the Indo-European Nominal Inflection (IBS, 1985)
• A Grammar of Gatha-Avestan (Brill, 1988)
• Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (Benjamins, 1995)
• Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill, 2009)