Kenneth Katzner, one of America's most distinguished authorities on the Russian language died May 25, 2003 in Washington, DC. He was 72.

Author of the definitive "Russian/English-English/Russian Dictionary," first published by John Wiley and Sons in 1984 with a second edition appearing in 1994, Mr. Katzner also wrote "A Russian Review Text" published in 1962 by Random House and "Languages of the World," with a fourth edition published by Routledge in 2002. In 1999, with his wife, he launched the online company Wordfind which produced and sold the CD-Rom version of his dictionary. It was programmed by Robert McNelly for the Windows operating system. The dictionary has become the standard reference work for students, teachers, and translators of Russian. Mr. Katzner devoted more than thirty-five years of his life working on the dictionary in his spare time and was completing the third edition at the time of his death.

Mr. Katzner served as editor of the Grolier Encyclopedia and later for Encyclopaedia Britannica and "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language" where he developed his methodology for researching and defining the various meanings of words. He also penned numerous magazine articles Op-Ed pieces that appeared in newspapers in the U.S. and overseas and gave lectures on his work.

Born in Washington, DC, December 2, 1930, he grew up in Forest Hills, New York and returned to Washington in 1972. A graduate of Cornell University in 1952 and the U.S. Air Force Institute Language Program at Syracuse University where he studied Russian, he went on to serve as captain in the United States Air Force. He was a communications intelligence officer based in England. Mr. Katzner worked as a Soviet Specialist in the United States Government for 20 years in both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense. He traveled extensively throughout the world, was an accomplished and frequently published photographer and a Life Master bridge player.