Braj Bihari Kachru (15 May 1932 – 29 July 2016) was an Indian-American linguist. He was Jubilee Professor of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He published studies on the Kashmiri language. Personal life Braj Bihari Kachru was a friend of Kashmiri poet and writer Zinda Kaul Masterji. Lala Sahab and his friends and colleagues had discussions on politics, literature and philosophy at his house. During their visits, Braj had the opportunity to interact with Masterji and his father's other teacher colleagues. In 1962 Kachru gained a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh. His wife was fellow linguist Yamuna Kachru. Their son, Shamit Kachru, is a string theorist and professor at Stanford University. He died on 29 July 2016. Career He researched in the fields of World Englishes and Kashmiri language and published several books and research papers related to the field. Scholar and educationist At the University of Illinois, Braj headed the Department of Linguistics (1968–79), directed the Division of English as an International Language (1985–91), and was director of the Center for Advanced Study (June 1996 – January 2000). At the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, he was appointed director in 1978. He was president of American Association of Applied Linguistics (1984). He was named Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Illinois in 1992. In 1998, he became the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University. He went on to become the president of the International Association for World Englishes (1997–99), and eventually the Honorary Fellow of the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, (now English and Foreign Languages University) in Hyderabad, India, in 2001. Writer and author Kachru has been on the editorial board of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural development, International Journal of the Sociology of Languages, Asian Englishes and Linguistics and the Human Sciences. Along with authoring The Alchemy of English: The Spread, Functions and Models of Non-Native Englishes, Kachru is also the associate editor for Contributor to the Cambridge History of the English Language and the acclaimed The Oxford Companion to the English Language. The circles of English To better understand the use of English in different countries, Kachru conceived the idea of three concentric circles of the language. The inner circle represents the traditional bases of English: the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, anglophone Canada,