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JAKOBSON Roman Osipovicˇ Jakobson (1896-1982). One of the most important contributors of the twentieth century to a scientific theory of language as a semiotic system. Graduate of the Lazarev Institute in 1914, Jakobson then enrolled in Moscow University. Co-founder of the Moscow Linguistics Circle in 1915, the St Petersburg OPOJAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language) and the Prague Linguistics Circle in 1926. His scholarship can be divided into his Moscow period (1915-1926), his Czechoslovak period (1926-1939) and his American period (1949-1982). Originally known as a representative of Russian Formalism, Jakobson became one of its major critics and, subsequently, a primary contributor to the structuralist paradigm. By 1957 Jakobson had become the first scholar to hold simultaneous chairs at both Harvard (specifically the Samuel Hazzard Cross Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other American affiliations include the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and a term as president of the Linguistic Society of America.