Jakobson Roman Osipovich (Roman Jakobson)

Born in Moscow in 1896. In 1914 he graduated from the Lazarev Institute and entered Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1918. In 1915 he became one of the founders of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and remained its chairman until 1920. In 1918-1920 he worked at Moscow University. In February 1920 he went to Revel as part of the trade delegation of the Central Union as an employee of ROSTA, and from there in July of the same year to Czechoslovakia as a translator for the Red Cross mission involved in the repatriation of prisoners of war. Then he worked in the Soviet embassy. In 1926 he became one of the founders of the Prague Linguistic Circle and served as vice-president there. In 1930 he defended his doctoral dissertation at the German University in Prague. In 1937 he received Czechoslovak citizenship. Participating in international scientific conferences and congresses, he traveled extensively throughout Europe; these trips were paid for by the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry. In 1939 he moved to Denmark, then to Norway and Sweden. Since June 1941 - in the USA. From 1942 to 1946 he was a professor of general linguistics at the Free School of Higher Studies. From 1943 to 1946 he was also a visiting professor of linguistics at Columbia University. In 1944 he became one of the founders of the New York Linguistic Circle. From 1949 to 1965, professor of Slavic languages ​​and literature at Harvard University (from 1965 Professor Emeritus). Since 1957 also a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On November 17, 1952 he became a naturalized US citizen. In 1959 he founded the International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics and became its editor-in-chief.
In 1982 he died at home in Cambridge (Massachusetts).