The most familiar linguists

1. M.A.K. Halliday

Michael Halliday, in full Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, also called M.A.K. Halliday (born April 13, 1925, Leeds, Yorkshire, England), British linguist, teacher, and proponent of neo-Firthian theory who viewed language basically as a social phenomenon. Halliday obtained his B.A. in Chinese language and literature from the University of London and then did postgraduate work in linguistics, first at Peking University and later at the University of Cambridge, from which he obtained his Ph.D. in 1955.In his early work, known as “scale and category linguistics,” Halliday devised four categories (unit, structure, class, and system) and three scales (rank, exponent, and delicacy) to describe language. He also did work on intonation (Intonation and Grammar in British English, 1967) and on discourse analysis (Cohesion in English, 1976). His later theory, sometimes called systemic linguistics, was that language has three functions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Michael-Halliday

2. Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro, (born 116 bc, probably Reate, Italy—died 27 bc), Rome’s greatest scholar and a satirist of stature, best known for his Saturae Menippeae (“Menippean Satires”). He was a man of immense learning and a prolific author. Inspired by a deep patriotism, he intended his work, by its moral and educational quality, to further Roman greatness. Seeking to link Rome’s future with its glorious past, his works exerted great influence before and after the founding of the Roman Empire (27 bc). Varro wrote about 74 works in more than 600 books on a wide range of subjects: jurisprudence, astronomy, geography, education, and literary history, as well as satires, poems, orations, and letters. The only complete work to survive is the Res rustica (“Farm Topics”), a three-section work of practical instruction in general agriculture and animal husbandry, written to foster a love of rural life. Dedicated to Cicero, Varro’s De lingua Latina (“On the Latin Language”) is of interest not only as a linguistic work but also as a source of valuable incidental information on a variety of subjects. Of the original 25 books there remain, apart from brief fragments, only books v to x, and even these contain considerable gaps. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marcus-Terentius-Varro

3. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

Ferdinand de Saussure, (born Nov. 26, 1857, Geneva, Switz.—died Feb. 22, 1913, Vufflens-le-Château), Swiss linguist whose ideas on structure in language laid the foundation for much of the approach to and progress of the linguistic sciences in the 20th century.. His name is affixed, however, to the Cours de linguistique générale (1916; Course in General Linguistics), a reconstruction of his lectures on the basis of notes by students carefully prepared by his junior colleagues Charles Bally and Albert Séchehaye. He thus formalized the basic approaches to language study and asserted that the principles and methodology of each approach are distinct and mutually exclusive. He also introduced two terms that have become common currency in linguistics—“parole,” or the speech of the individual person, and “langue,” the system underlying speech activity. His distinctions proved to be mainsprings to productive linguistic research and can be regarded as starting points on the avenue of linguistics known as structuralism. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ferdinand-de-Saussure)

4. Eugene A. Nida

Eugene Albert Nida was born on November 11 1914 in Oklahoma City, where his father was a chiropractor. When he was five, the family moved to California, and while studying Latin in high school Eugene was already anticipating being able to translate Scripture as a missionary. He duly graduated in Greek and Latin at the University of California at Los Angeles, and in 1939 received a Master's degree in New Testament Greek from the University of Southern California. In 1943 he was ordained as a Baptist minister and in the same year earned a doctorate in Linguistics from the University of Michigan. He also joined the American Bible Society, becoming head of its translation program three years later. http://www.marie-claire-palabras.com/2012/09/eugene-albert-nida.html