Professor Mahmoud Fahmy Hegazi

Fahmy Hegazi completed his bachelor’s degree at Cairo University in the Arabic Language Department in 1958, and his master’s degree in 1959. At the same time, he pursued all the courses of the German Language Department at the Al-Alsun School in the Ministry of Higher Education, where he mastered Dutch. He was the first Egyptian to teach Dutch in the general education schools in Egypt. He was then appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature. Afterwards, he was sent to Germany to complete his doctoral studies in linguistics at the University of Munich.

He held several academic and administrative positions, including: President of the Egyptian University, Almaty, Kazakhstan, Chairman of the National Library and Archives, Professor of Linguistics and Head of Arabic Language and Literature at the Faculty of Arts and Director of Arabic Language Center at Cairo University, University of Budapest (Hungary), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Lyon (France), and Visiting Professor of Postgraduate Studies at several Arab universities. Professor Hejazi was a Language Sciences instructor at the College of Arts, Cairo University, a member of the Arabic Language Academy in Cairo, the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Language Sciences in Cairo, and the Editor-in-Chief of the ZAL Journal in Erlangen, Germany. Professor Hegazi is the author of many books and research in Arabic Linguistic and Literature.

In recognition of his scientific efforts, he was awarded a number of decorations and awards, including the Federal Order of Merit of the First Class of Germany in 1997, the 1998 Cairo University Prize in Humanities, the State Prize for Literature in Egypt in 2000, and the 2013 Medal of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.