and Paul Passy and attending lectures at institutions like Oxford University. Following the advice of his mentor Vilhelm Thomsen, he returned to Copenhagen in August 1888 and began work on his doctoral dissertation on the English case system. He successfully defended his dissertation in 1891. Academic life and work Jespersen was a professor of English at the University of Copenhagen from 1893 to 1925, and served as Rector of the university in 1920 – 21. His early work focused primarily on language teaching reform and on phonetics, but he is best known for his later work on syntax and on language development. He advanced the theories of Rank and Nexus in Danish in two papers: Sprogets logik (1913) and De to hovedarter af grammatiske forbindelser (1921). Jespersen in