Linguist, university professor, Arabic lexicographer, and thinker, Mahmoud Fahmi Hegazy, born in Egypt, was a reader, an associate professor and later a professor of linguistics at the Arts Faculty, Cairo University. Hegazy has helped prepare the "German Arabic Dictionary" and the "Encyclopedia of Arabic Names" and has published on linguistics and on the history of ideas, as well as having translated around 30 books from German and English. He has written prolifically on linguistics, the craft of lexicography, linguistic policy, and terminology and has supervised over 100 theses, some in cooperation with German and French universities. Hegazy went to government schools in Egypt, and then the Arts Faculty of Cairo University where he graduated with distinction in 1958. He received his doctorate from the University of Munich in West Germany in 1965.