Viktor Markovich Zhivov (Russian: Виктор Маркович Живов; February 5, 1945 in Moscow – April 17, 2013 in Berkeley, California) was a Russian and American philologist, specializing on the history of Russian language. Zhivov was a professor at the Russian Language Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and at the Department of Slavic and Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley.^[1][2]

Viktor Zhivov was born in 1945 in Moscow in a Jewish family. His father was Mark Zhivov, an author and a translator. He graduated from Moscow State University and in 1977 obtained his Candidate of Sciences degree there for his thesis on Russian phonology.^[3][4] Zhivov was a professor at Moscow State University and received there the degree of a Doctor of Science in 1992. In 2001, he retired from Moscow State University. Zhivov joined faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in 1995 and until his death had a double appointment: He was teaching at Berkeley half a year every year, and he spent the rest of his time in Moscow, where he was a Deputy Director of the Russian Language Institute.^[2]

In 1982, Zhivov published a paper on the works of Maximus the Confessor, which is still highly cited. In 1994, he published a dictionary of sacred terms in Russian. Until his death, he was working on a monograph on the history of Russian language, which he almost completed.^[2]