Georgia announces scholarship dedicated to country’s first President

The President of Georgia Giorgi Margelashvili has introduced a scholarship in the first president’s name that will be awarded to an outstanding student studying historic literature.

Margvelashvili announced the Zviad Gamsakhurdia Scholarship would be awarded to an outstanding student within the faculty of philology from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.

Gamsakhurdia was a dissident, scientist and writer and became Georgia’s first democratically elected president in the post-Soviet era in 1992. He would have celebrated his 75th birthday today.

"Gamsakhurdia spent his scientific and pedagogical works in the faculty of philology, which was the most important period of his life,” Margvelashvili said.

He believed the merit of Gamsakhurdia would be appreciated and be an "essential incentive” for young people, "who have to bear the responsibility of developing science and development of the country”.

See also: Family of Georgia’s first president demands answers to his unsolved death

See also: Gov’t pays tribute to country’s first president

Gamsakhurdia was born into a Georgian family in 1939, in Tbilisi. He was the son of Konstantin Gamsakhurdia, a leading Georgian literary figure, and some of his ancestors were princes. He graduated from the Tbilisi State University after studying West European languages, and obtained a doctorate in philology.

Gamsakhurdia was a Shakespearian scholar and translated Shakespeare’s work into Georgian. He was fluent in Russian, French and German.

In 1991, Gamsakhurdia was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Georgian Academy of Sciences for his book The Language of the Forms of the Knight in a Lordly Skin.