Brian George Hewitt, FBA (born 11 November 1949) is an English academic linguist who is Emeritus Professor of Caucasian languages as the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), University of London.
[5] He received his primary and secondary education in his hometown where he attended the former Doncaster Grammar School for boys (now called the Hall Cross Academy), which has been in existence since at least 1350.
In addition, he was awarded a John Stewart of Rannoch Scholarship during his second undergraduate-year and at the end of that year won from his college a Graves Prize.
He successfully completed undergraduate studies in 1972, earning a Bachelor's degree (BA), selecting for his final year of the Classics Tripos the philology option (Group E).
[1] After flirting with the idea of joining the police service in Liverpool, he decided to embark in 1973 on a doctorate, wanting to compare/contrast Ancient Greek with another Indo-European language.
[1] The advice of Cambridge’s then-Emeritus Professor of Sanskrit, the distinguished Indo-Europeanist Sir Harold Bailey, whom he consulted was to choose either Lithuanian or Armenian.
Prof. Auty proved difficult to reach and by the time his positive response was received, Hewitt had already elected to work on Old Armenian under the general supervision of Alan Sommerstein, but, when the latter moved to Nottingham in 1974, Bernard Comrie took over.
[1] Although for two years Hewitt was gathering relevant data for Greek and Armenian, he was developing an ever keener interest in Georgian and other Caucasian languages.
[5] From 1976 to 1978 he de-registered as a doctoral student and worked as research-assistant on a project on the Non-Slavic languages of the USSR led by Bernard Comrie, which was funded by the British Social Science Research Council.
However, he remains skeptical about the likelihood of wider recognition of Abkhazia's independence, even though he believes that this would be the best outcome for the future not only of the young republic but also of Georgia too.