Stephen Wurm

Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky. He was christened Istvan Adolphe Wurm. His father died before Stephen was born.

Both of his parents were multilingual, and Wurm showed an interest in languages from an early age. Attending school in Vienna and travelling to all parts of Europe during his childhood, Wurm spoke roughly nine languages by the time he reached adulthood, a gift he inherited from his father, who spoke 17. Wurm went on to master at least 50 languages.

Wurm grew up stateless, unable to take the nationality of either of his parent or of his country of residence, Austria. That enabled him to avoid military service and attend university. He studied Turkic languages at the Oriental Institute in Vienna, receiving his doctorate in linguistics and social anthropology in 1944 for a dissertation on Uzbek.

In 1946, he married fellow student Helen Groger-Wurm, a specialist in African ethnography. He taught Altaic linguistics at the University of Vienna until 1951.

After reading some works by Sidney Herbert Ray, Wurm became interested in Papuan languages and began a correspondence with Arthur Capell, a lecturer in linguistics at the University of Sydney. Wurm began teaching himself Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu from books and took up a position in London.

In 1954, the Wurms moved to Australia, where Capell had organised for Wurm a post in the Anthropology Department at the University of Sydney. In 1957, the Wurms moved to Canberra, where Stephen took up a post as Senior Fellow within the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS, now Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs) at the new Australian National University (ANU). The same year, the Wurms received Australian citizenship. From then on, the main focus of Wurm's research was the study of the languages of New Guinea, but he also carried out research on a number of Australian Aboriginal languages.

At the Australian National University, he was Professor of Linguistics from 1968 to 1987.