Eliezer ben Yehuda

Eliezer ben Yehuda (1858-1922), Hebrew scholar, born in Lithuania, and originally named Eliezer Perelman. While studying medicine in Paris in 1879, he became interested in the idea of reviving Jewish culture in its homeland. In 1881 he emigrated to Palestine, and four years later he established a magazine dedicated to the revival of Hebrew as a living language. He also began to coin new Hebrew words needed in modern life. In 1910 he started to compile his Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew; it was completed, posthumously, in 17 volumes, in 1959.