Juliet rukhadze - life and work

The eminent Georgian ethnologist Juliet Rukhadze played an important role in the establishment and development of ethnology in Georgia. She has selflessly served this field of science for decades. Juliet Rukhadze was born in 1921 in the family of a medical worker in Poti (the west Georgia), after graduating from school, she continued her studies at the University. Since 1945 she worked at Ivane Javakhishvili Institute of Archeology, History and Ethnography (then Institute of History and Ethnology). At the Institute her career covers all stages of the scientific career - from junior researcher to the Head of the department. The topic of Juliet Rukhadze’s first dissertation, which she defended in 1955, was the folk holiday - Berikaoba – Keenoba. The work was published under the auspices of Unesco, in the form of a popular science book, in Georgian, Russian and English, entitled - Georgian Folk Holiday. The work was awarded the first prize at the International Book Festival in Chile. It was published as a scientific monograph only in 1999, and in 2001 it was awarded the prize of Academician Simon Janashia. In 1976 was published the monograph, Folk Agriculture in Western Georgia, on the basis of which in 1986 Juliet Rukhadze was awarded the degree of the Doctor of Hitorical Sciences. Juliet Tukhadze is the author of a number of popular science books, and the greatest merit of her work is in gathering ethnographic field data, which later were issued in eleven volumes - entitled Living Stories.Owing to her public activity, a series of important books and albums were published. Among them V. Bardavelidze’s Spiritual Life and Culture of the Georgian People, Program-Questionnaire (Tbilisi, 1988),V. Bardavelidze’s Ivris Pshavlebi (A Diary) (Tbilisi, 2003), Annotated Bibliography of Ethnographic/Ethnological Literature (Tbilisi, 2004),Nino BrailaShvili’s (a remarkable Georgian painter’s) album under the title: «I remember Georgia as such» (Tbilisi 1990), etc. Juliet Rukhadze did a lot for the reorganization and rearrangement of the Ethnographic Archive of the Institute. She was a remarkable field worker, an outstanding scholar and a kind and loving person. Juliet Rukhadze died on October 25 2012.