Kaj Birket-Smith was a Danish  philologist

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

 and anthropologist. He specialized in studying the habits and language of the Inuit

Inuit

The Inuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic regions of Canada , Denmark , Russia and the United States . Inuit means “the people” in the Inuktitut language...

 and Eyak

Eyak

The Eyak are an indigenous group traditionally located on the Copper River Delta and near the town of Cordova, Alaska.-Territory:The Eyak's territory reached from present day Cordova east to the Martin River and north to Miles Glacier....

. Birket-Smith was a member of Knud Rasmussen's 1921 Thule expedition. In 1940, he became director of the Ethnographic Department of the National Museum of Denmark

National Museum of Denmark

The National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen is Denmark’s largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main domicile is located a short distance from Strøget at the center of Copenhagen. It contains exhibits from around the world,...

.

Personal life

Birket-Smith was the son of Danish librarian and literary historian Sophus Birket-Smith and wife Ludovica F. Nielsen.

He received his Ph.D. in linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 in 1937. He was a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog

Order of the Dannebrog

The Order of the Dannebrog is an Order of Denmark, instituted in 1671 by Christian V. It resulted from a move in 1660 to break the absolutism of the nobility. The Order was only to comprise 50 noble Knights in one class plus the Master of the Order, i.e. the Danish monarch, and his sons...

.

In 1920, he married Minna (born 1894). Birket-Smith died in 1977.

Awards

• Geographical Society Hans Egede Medal
• Royal Anthropological Institute's Huxley medal
• Loubat Prize

Partial works

• (1916). The Greenland bow. København: Bianco Lunos bogtr.
• (1918). A geographic study of the early history of the Algonquian Indians
• (1920). Ancient artefacts from the Eastern United States
• (1924). Ethnography of the Egedesminde District with Aspects of the General Culture of West Greenland
• (1925). Preliminary report of the Fifth Thule Expedition Physical anthropology, linguistics, and material culture
• (1928). On the origin of Eskimo culture
• (1928). Five hundred Eskimo words: A comparative vocabulary from Greenland and Central Eskimo dialects
• (1928). The Greenlanders of the present day
• (1928). Physiography of West Greenland
• (1929). The Caribou Eskimos. Material and social life and their cultural position
• (1929). Drinking-tube and tobacco pipe in North America
• (1930). Contributions to Chipewyan ethnology
• (1933). Geographical notes on the Barren
• (1938). The Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta, Alaska
• (1940). Anthropological observations of the Central Eskimos
• (1943). The origin of maize cultivation