Roman Osipovich Jakobson (October 11, 1896-July 18, 1982) was a talented multilingual scholar. Inspired by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) in his early studies, after he left his father land Russia, he later taught in American top universities Harvar (1949-1982) and MIT(1957-1982) and brought up contemporary linguists like Morris Halle(1923-) and Noam Chomsky(1928-). In recognition of his academic achievements, tens of universities bestowed him honorary doctoral degrees in literature and science. He was also actively involved with administrations in form of president and vice president of several important academic associations. Throughout his life, he published more than 500 papers and books all together, making significant contribution of his remarkable insights in various areas such as poetry, literature, slavistics, bible studies, anthropology, translation, semiotics, phonetics, linguistics and so on. He counted as one of the pioneering linguists to claim that aphasia study is a linguistic topic. He was one of the few linguists to become honorable member of Academy of Aphasia. This paper starts with a brief introduction of his remarkable life and focused later on his studies on aphasia. Tracing his life works in the historical framework is helpful in clarifying his views on aphasia and in a broader sense on neurolinguistics. Generally honored as ”the Piccasso in Linguistics”, his role as pioneer in the interdisciplinary integration of linguistics and patholinguistics in the modern history of neurolinguistics is worth our attention.
