Ladislav Zgusta (20 March 1924 in Libochovice – 27 April 2007 in Urbana, Illinois) was a Czech-American historical linguist and lexicographer, who wrote one of the first textbooks on lexicography.

[1] He was the Hermann and Klara H. Collitz professor of linguistics and classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, starting in 1970 after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia ended his academic career at Prague's Oriental Institute.

With his family he first escaped to India, "in a veritable cloak and dagger episode worthy of a movie" before making his way to the United States.

[2] Dutch lexicographer Piet van Sterkenburg referred to Zgusta as "the twentieth-century godfather of lexicography".

You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.This biographical article about a Czech academic is a stub.