Sumitra Mangesh Katre

Sumitra Mangesh Katre (Prof. S. M. Katre) (11 April 1906 – 21 October 1998), a lexicographer, Indo Aryan and Paninian linguist, was born at Honnavar, Karnataka and died in San Jose, California, USA. Katre initiated the gigantic Sanskrit Dictionary Project, An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Sanskrit on Historical Principles, with its 11 million slips preserved in the scriptorium.

His work The Formation of Konkani is his tribute to his mother tongue Konkani. S. M. Katre’s 1966 work, The Formation of Konkani, which used the instruments of modern historical and comparative linguistics across six typical Konkani dialects, showed the formation of Konkani to be distinct from that of Marathi. He was president of the 7th Session of the All India Konkani Parishad held 27–28 April 1957 at Mumbai.