Rafael Lapesa, academic and emeritus professor of Spanish Language, the distinguished disciple of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, was born in Valencia on the 8th February 1908. His family moved to Madrid in 1916, and he received his secondary education at the Cardinal Cisneros High School, where he had as teachers, among others, Vicente García de Diego, Francisco Morán and Eloy Luis André.

He read Philosophy and Arts at the University of Madrid, where he graduated and received his doctorate in Arts, subsequently extending his studies in the Centre for Historical Studies, where he was graduate student (1927-28) and associate (1929-39). Here he began his philological research under the direct tutorship of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Américo Castro and Tomás Navarro Tomás. In 1930, after examination, he was selected as a head of department of Spanish language and Literature, a post which he filled in the National High Schools of Madrid (1930-41), Oviedo (1942) and Salamanca (1942-47), at the same time teaching in the respective universities.

In 1947 he obtained, also by selection examination, the chair of Historical Grammar of the Spanish Language (later termed History of Spanish) at the University of Madrid, which he occupied until his retirement in 1978. Also in 1947 he began to work in the Seminary of Lexicography of the Royal Spanish Academy, recently created to draw up the historical dictionary of the Spanish language. Lapesa was later the assistant director (1950-68) and director (1969-81) of the Seminary.

Elected as a numerary member in 1950, he entered the Royal Spanish Academy in 1954, and was its secretary from 1964 to 1971. In 1987 he took charge of the interim running of the Royal Academy after the resignation of the previous director, Pedro Laín Entralgo.

Among the many publications of Rafael Lapesa, the "History of the Spanish Language" stands out as a fundamental work for the teaching of Spanish in many foreign universities, and which has, since 1942, seen the light in several, successively expanded editions. Other works of his are: "La trayectoria poética de Garcilaso" (1948); "La obra literaria del Marqués de Santillana" (1957); "De la Edad Media a nuestros días" (1967); "Poetas y prosistas de ayer y de hoy" (1977); "Estudios de historia lingüística española" (1985); "Garcilaso: estudios completos" (1985); "De Ayala a Ayala" (1988), etc.

As a visiting lecturer, Lapesa taught in the American universities of Princeton (1948-49), Harvard (1948, 1952-54), Yale (1949 and 1952), Berkeley (1949), Pennsylvania (1952) and Wisconsin (1956), in whose Institute for Research in Humanities he worked as a researcher during the academic year 1959-60. Likewise he taught at the universities of Puerto Rico (1960), Buenos Aires and La Plata (1962) and in the College of Mexico (1960 and 68). He has also given lectures in many others in France, England, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, the United States, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina and Peru.

An elected numerary member of the Royal Academy of History, he is a doctor "honoris causa" of the Universities of Tolouse (1964), Valencia (1985), Oviedo (1985), Salamanca (1986), Spanish Open University and Helsinki (1990), and an honourary lecturer of San Marcos de Lima (1975). He is an honourary member of the Modern Language Association of America and of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, a member of the Hispanic Society of America, a corresponding member of the Royal Galician Academy, the Royal Academy of Letters of Barcelona, the Argentinean Academy of Letters, the National Academy of Letters of Uruguay, the Paraguayan Academy of the Spanish Language, the Academy of Arts and Letters of Puerto Rico, the Institute for Asturian Studies, the "Alfonso el Magnánimo" Institution of Valencia and the Centre for Valencian Culture.

He is also honourary president of the International Association of Hispanicists, of which he was the vice-president from 1965 to 1971, and president from 1974 to 1977. Among his distinctions are the Grand Cross of the Order of Alfonso el Sabio and of the Order of Andrés Bello.

Rafael Lapesa, the indisputable master of various generations of American and Spanish philologists, has published more than 300 articles in the fields of linguistics, the history of literature and literary criticism.