Yakov Malkiel has been associated for 24 years with the University of California at Berkeley, where he currently is professor of romance philology and linguistics. Born in Kiev, he received his formal education in Germany; his doctorate was taken in romance philology (with emphasis on Old French) and Slavic and Semitic philology. After moving to the United States in 1940, he shifted his research interests to Old Spanish. In 1948 he married the noted Argentine historian Maria Rosa Lida (d. 1962). His dominant interest at present in the theory of linguistic change.