Samuel Jay Keyser

Samuel Jay Keyser was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 7, 1935. He grew up in Washington, DC and attended George Washington, Oxford and Yale University, where he received his PhD in linguistics in 1962. Keyser has taught at Brandeis University, University College, London, the University of Massachusetts and MIT where he joined the faculty in July of 1977 and from which he retired in 1998. He is currently Special Assistant to the Chancellor at MIT, a position he has held since his retirement.

Aside from his academic writings, Keyser has written one book of poems "Raising the Dead," a book of children's poems "The Pond God and Other Stories," the winner of a Lee Bennett Hopkins Honor Book Award in 2004, and a memoir "I Married a Travel Junkie."

His latest book, "Mens et Mania: The MIT Nobody Knows" is an account of the MIT culture from his vantage point as Department Head, housemaster and Associate Provost. This book will be published by the MIT Press on May 1, 2011.

When he is not writing, Keyser plays jazz trombone with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, an avant garde jazz orchestra described by one reviewer as "a walk on the wild side" and the New Liberty Jazz Band, a Dixieland band that plays in the New Orleans style from the back of a restored 1941 Ford fire engine. Between the two bands Keyser has appeared on over a dozen CDs.

When he is not writing or playing, Keyser follows his wife around the world. She is a travel addict and an account of why Keyser follows her, despite his own innate fear of travel, is recounted in "I Married a Travel Junkie."