Roman Jakobson

• born: Moscow, Russia; 1896
• died: Boston, U.S.A.; 1982

• as a European structural linguist
• as a principal in the founding of the Prague Linguistic Circle or Prague school (of linguistics)
• as an authority on Slavic linguistics

Jakobson moved to the U.S. in 1941 and taught at Columbia Universtity (1943-49), Harvard (1950-67) and M.I.T. (1957-67).

Writings:

• "Comments on Phonological Change in Russian Compared with That in Other Slavic Languages" (1929)
• "Characteristics of the Eurasian Language Affinity" (1931)
• "Studies in Child-Language" (1941)
• "Aphasia" (1941)
• "Preliminaries to Speech Analysis (1952)
• "Fundamentals of Language" (1956)
• "Selected Writings" (6 volumes, 1967–71)
• "The Sound Shape of Language" (with Linda R. Waugh, 1979)

"The Myth of Roman Jakobson," Aaron Beaver, University of Chicago
"Intellectual currents of the twentieth century," prepared by James Heartfield
Encyclopædia Britannica (online)