S. I. Hayakawa with John Linn and Unidentified Administrator

President Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa, was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1906.He was educated in Canadian public schools and received his Ph.D. in AmericanLiterature and Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin. S. I. Hayakawa hadachieved renown as a semanticist before he came to San Francisco. His book,Language in Action, published in 1941, made him an international authority onsemantics, the study of meanings in language. Dr. Hayakawa came to San FranciscoState as a faculty member in 1955, and was appointed Acting President in December,1968 upon the resignation of Robert R. Smith. He served as Acting President untilJuly, 1969, when the Board of Trustees officially appointed him to the position ofPresident. During his term as President, San Francisco State went through the mostturbulent period of its history. It was during his term, too, that the name of theUniversity was changed from San Francisco State College to California StateUniversity, San Francisco. Dr. Hayakawa retired as President in 1973. In 1976, he ranfor the U. S. Senate and won. He served as a U. S. Senator from 1976 through 1982.He died February 27, 1992. 

 John H. Linn,1958. Professor of Business. BA (1949), MA (1950) San Francisco State University; Ed.D. (1958) University of Southern California. Started as a journeyman electrician active in local 180 IBEW before teaching. Retired in 1982.

Credits: S. I. Hayakawa's bio and John Linn's bio were provided by Meredith Eliassen and some descriptions were developed with the assistance of ChatGPT, an AI language model by OpenAI.