Tatiana Proskouriakoff

Tatiana Proskouriakoff proved that Maya inscriptions record the lives of real rulers, and in doing so turned an ancient civilisation from a mystery into a history. She was born in Tomsk, came to the United States as a child when her father was sent on a war mission, trained as an architect during the Depression and could not find work, and was hired to draw reconstructions of Maya sites - her perspective drawings of Copan and Piedras Negras are still reproduced. The prevailing view, held above all by Eric Thompson, was that the inscriptions were astronomical and calendrical and that the Maya were peaceable priest-astronomers without dynastic politics. In 1960 she published an analysis of the monuments at Piedras Negras showing that they fell into groups spanning human lifetimes, each beginning with an inaugural date and a recurring glyph, with an earlier date roughly a lifespan before it. She had found birth and accession records. It followed that the figures were rulers, that the sites had dynasties, and that the texts were political. The decipherment of Maya writing followed from that. She refused to publish speculation and worked at Harvard's Peabody Museum for decades; her ashes are buried at Piedras Negras. Eric Thompson accepted her conclusion, which was unusual in him and settled the question quickly. Her work ran in parallel with Yuri Knorozov's demonstration in the Soviet Union that the script was partly phonetic, and the two together are why Maya texts can now be read. She was awarded the Order of the Quetzal by Guatemala. She published little and refused honorary degrees.

• Lived: 1909 CE – 1985 CE
• Nationality: American
• Roles: scientist, artist