Ferdinand de Saussure born (26/11/1857)

Replaying from the 2018 Linguistic Birthdays thread:
November 26 - Ferdinand de Saussure (1857)
Known for two things, one from the beginning of his career
and the other from the end.
1878 - _Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes_ -- a brilliant internal reconstruction of the PIE
root system. Saussure postulated "coéfficients sonantiques" which
later proved to have been actual consonants -- the "laryngeal" theory
which is now IE orthodoxy.
1906-1911 - Lectures on general linguistics at the University of Geneva,
Compiled after his death by two colleagues into the _Cours de linguistique générale_ (1916). This certainly had an influence on structural linguists both in Europe and America. The synchronic/diachronic and langue/parole distinctions, and the emphasis on contrast, pointed the direction that linguistics would take in the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure