Mark Gawron: Besides his linguistic research, this computational semanticist
has also written science fiction, including the novel Algorithm.
Suzette Haden Elgin: The author of several linguistics texts, she is
perhaps best-known for her pop-linguistic work The Gentle Art of Verbal Self
Defense; however she too has written a number of science fiction novels, including
the linguistically-oriented Native Tongue.
Edward Rulloff: This infamous nineteenth-century murderer tried to
delay his execution by arguing that it would prevent him from finishing his
book on the nature of language. He was executed anyway; his brain - the second-largest
on record - is on display in the Psychology Building at Cornell University.
Noam Chomsky: He revolutionized the entire discipline of linguistics
and has been the dominant figure in the field for years, but he is still at
least as famous for his radical political writings as for his linguistic research.
J.R.R. Tolkien: The author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings was
a professor of philology at Oxford; he contributed to the Oxford English Dictionary
and to the translation of the Jerusalem Bible.
Jacob Grimm: Most people know him as one of the fairy-tale-collecting
Brothers Grimm, but of course he was one of the main founders of modern linguistics.
G.W. Leibniz: The German philosopher and mathematician did important
early work on the identification of language families.
Friedrich Nietzsche: Famous as a philosopher, he was actually a professor
of philology at the University of Basel.
Adam Smith: The famous political economist also wrote A Dissertation
on the Origin of Languages.
Joseph Stalin: Stalin's linguistics articles brought an end to the
"Marrist" school of linguistics, which had dominated soviet work
until that time. Although anti-soviet writers such as Milan Kundera and Jerzy
Kosinsky later mocked him for dabbling in a technical field in which he had
no training, the overall effect of Stalin's linguistic work can probably be
regarded as positive.