Martin Joos

On May 6, 1978, the Linguistic Society and the science to which it is dedicated lost a colleague and scholar who was one of the influential figures of the time-more influential than many of those who did not know him may realize.Martin Joos produced five major books, wrote more than twenty articles of importance, nearly as many reviews, and exercised lasting effects on a generation of students and fellow linguists.Martin was born and grew up in the rural farming area of Wisconsin.The date of his birth was May 11, 1907, and he was one often children in the family of Alfred Joos.The family remained close throughout his life, and was a force guiding him toward his distinguished career in scholarship.During the first years of his life, moreover, he was bilingual in English and German; this experience developed first into an unusual ability for mastering languages, and later into deep devotion to linguistics.It is therefore a little surprising that his college education at the University of Wisconsin was in electrical engineering, rather than language; but like all technical skills that Martin acquired, his knowledge of electronics later was put into the service of linguistics.It was not until he spent a year as a field worker for the Linguistic atlas of the United States and Canada that he finally committed himself to the study of language.Thus, when he returned to the University of Wisconsin for graduate work, he left the field of engineering and took advanced degrees in German-remarkably enough, without having to complete his undergraduate prerequisites.After completing a dissertation on Statistical studies of Gothic phonology, he was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Toronto; at that institution, and at the University of Wisconsin, he served throughout his teaching career.During World War II he served with the Signal Security Agency of the United States, using his language skills as a cryptanalyst, and his engineering skills in improving secret communication systems.For this service the War Department gave him its highest civilian award, a citation for distinguished service.He returned to the academic world at the University of Wisconsin in 1946, eventually holding the posts of Professor of German and Chairman of the Department.During his service at Madison, he was a faculty member of seven Linguistic Institutes, and was a visiting professor in summer terms at the Universities of Alberta and Edinburgh.During the academic year 1958-59, he was a visiting professor at the University of Belgrade.In 1952-55, he served as the managerial editor of the program for the production of Spoken English textbooks for speakers of Eastern languages and of such little-studied European tongues as Serbo-Croatian.The program was sponsored by the ACLS, and was brought to a successful conclusion in large measure because of Martin's services both in adapting typographical resources for producing extremely difficult text, and because of his linguistic knowledge.I have mentioned that Martin's relationships with his brothers, sisters, and parents were remarkably close and supportive.Those who were privileged to know him also