Roman Jakobson was one of the most influential linguists of the 20th century. He was born in Russia and helped develop structural linguistics and revolutionary techniques for analyzing linguistic systems. Jakobson defined six key functions of language: referential, emotive, conative, poetic, metalingual, and phatic. He taught at universities including Harvard and MIT, and made significant contributions to structuralism, semiotics, and poetics through his analysis of linguistic sounds and communication functions. Jakobson had a prolific career influencing the fields of linguistics, semiotics and literary theory.