Virsaladze Elena (1911–1977) – folklorist, philologist, Doctor in Philology (1964), Professor (1971), Honoured Researcher (1965), the State Award of the U.S.S.R. (1988).
She graduated from the Philological Faculty of the Tiflis (Tbilisi) University in 1930; and in 1936, she passed through the post-graduate courses of the Leningrad Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History. In 1936, she defended her Candidate thesis ‘Problems of the Genesis of Georgian Tale’. In 1936, she started to make lectures at the Tbilisi State University. She was repressed and spent 1937-1942 in the camp; then she returned to her works. Since 1976, she was Head of the Chair of Folkloristic at the Tbilisi State University. She publishe some works in Russia: ‘Georgian Folk Tales and Legends’ (1973) and ‘Georgian Hunting Myth and Poetry’ (1976).