Author, Anthropologist, Pioneer Linguist. Edward Sapir was one of the most important figures in the early development of the scientific study of language and its structure or linguistics. Born the son of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, his family immigrated to the United States when he was age five. As a student at Columbia University in New York City, Sapir came under the influence of anthropologist Franz Boas, who inspired him to study the Native American languages. With his linguistic background, Sapir became the one student of Boas to develop most completely the relationship between linguistics and anthropology. Sapir studied the ways in which language and culture influence each other, and he was interested in the relation between linguistic differences, and differences in cultural world views. By 1909 he had earned a Master's in Germanics and a PhD on the Takelma language, which was spoken in Oregon. Although there are many complexed theories on how a language is form, he continued his studies at the University of California at Berkeley and University of Pennsylvania, where he did fieldwork on the Native American tribes of the Takelma, Chinook, Yana, Southern Paiute and Ute. From 1910 to 1925 he served as chief of anthropology for the Canadian National Museum, in Ottawa, where he made a steady contribution to ethnology. In 1916 his first publication was "Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture: A Study in Method." In 1921 he published a full-length book, "Language", which was most influential on the study of linguistics. Later in 1949, he published a collection of essays, "Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality". His writings were known for being lucid. This followed with his joining with the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1925. His 1925 paper "Sound Patterns in Language" demonstrated that the sounds of language are not merely physical but mental and emotional. In 1931 he accepted a Sterling Professorship at Yale University, where he established the department of anthropology. This followed with his 1933 paper "The Psychological Reality of the Phoneme" and a series of papers for "Encyclopedia of Social Sciences." Among his students was Benjamin Whorf, who had little formal education on the subject of linguistics. Whorf enrolled in Sapir's first course at Yale University on "American Indian Linguistics," and the two men developed a deep professional relationship in the study of the many languages of American Indians. He found that his reasonings were developed by Whorf into the principle of linguistic relativity or the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis." Among his major contributions to linguistics is his classification of indigenous languages of the Americas, upon which he elaborated for most of his professional life. Sapir was the first to prove that the methods of comparative linguistics were equally valid when applied to indigenous languages. When the International Phonological Association was established in Prague in 1932, he was honored to be elected as the sole American member of its board. Late in his career, he studied the Indo-European and Semitic linguistics. Remaining active in the research until two years before his death, he continued to be the primary link between European and American phonologists. Besides being a scholar of languages, he was a poet, essayist, and composer. He published a collection of poems as "Poetry, the Dial, Freeman, and the Nation." He is credited with studying thirty-nine different Amerindian languages.