Iurii Shevel'ov (aka George Y.Shevelov, pseudonyms Iurii Sherekh, Hryhorii Shevchuk, and others), Slavic linguist, philologist, essayist, literary historian, and literary critic; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society since 1949 and of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1945, was born 17 December 1908 in Kharkiv (some sources, however, indicate Łomża, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire). He studied under Leonid Bulakhovsky at Kharkiv University, graduated and lectured there in Slavic linguistics (1939–1943). He emigrated to Germany during the war and received his Ph.D. degree frоm the Free University of Munich in 1949. He taught there from 1946 to 1949, and then at the University of Lund, Sweden form 1950 to 1952. He was one of the organizers of émigré literary life in Germany and was a vice-president of the literary association "MUR" (1945–1949). After settling in the United States, he served as lecturer in Russian and Ukrainian at Harvard University (1952–1954), associate professor (1954–1958) and professor of Slavic philology at Columbia University from 1958 to his retirement in 1977. He was a founding member of the "Slovo", Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile. From 1959 to 1961 and from 1981 to 1986 Shevel'ov served as President of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in New York, and editor in-chief of the Ukrainian émigré journal Suchasnist' (1978–1981). In 1991, Shevel'ov became a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

Iurii Shevel'ov is the author of numerous books and articles on Slavic philology and linguistics and the history of literature and literary criticism. He died 12 April 2002 in New York.