The article examines the university years (1939–1948) of the outstanding scholar Yu.V. Knorozov (1922–1999), especially his specialization in the Department of Ethnography of the Faculty of History (1943–1948). In the introduction, the authors summarizes his contribution to the study of scripts of Maya and Easter Islanders and Proto-Indian script, the origin of America’s peoples, paleoethnography of Beringia, ethnography of the Ainu, ethnosemiotics. According to the material from the Moscow State University Archive they reconstructed a list of disciplines that Yu.V. Knorozov attended as a student at Kharkov State University and the Department of Ethnography at Moscow State University. The article characterizes his teachers N.N. Bromley (English), V.I. Avdiev (Ancient World), I.S. Katznelson (Ancient Egyptian), G.B. Erenburg (Modern History of the East), N.N. Cheboksarov (Anthropology), V.I. Chicherov (Folklore), and a number of others. It quotes Knorozov’s recommendation for postgraduate study in the Faculty of History at Lomonosov Moscow State University and provides information about his scientifi c director during his studies at the department, the prominent archaeologist, ethnographer and orientalist S.P. Tolstoy. The authors write about Knorozov’s classmates in the Department of Ethnography, living conditions in the dormitory on Stromynka Street and peculiarities of the educational process at Moscow University in the mid-1940th. All these facts contribute to the understanding of the conditions in which Knorozov made himself a scholar. The article provides a brief outline of the study of Maya history in the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University at the turn of the 20th century and the prospects of research in this area. The authors conclude that interdisciplinarity, which is involved in the educational process in the Faculty of History of Moscow University in general and in the Department of Ethnography in particular, was very important for the formation of Knorozov’s personality and his innovative approaches to the study of the cultures of ancient and modern peoples.