Born in Stanislau, Austria-Hungary (now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine), he is considered the most outstanding contemporary Polish historical linguist, structuralist and language theoretician, deeply interested in the studies of Indo-European languages. He studied at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (1913–1914), and then, after World War I, continued his studies at Lwów University, where his unusual language skills drew the attention of some prominent linguists. As a result, he was granted a scholarship in Paris. This gave him an opportunity to qualify as a university professor of Indo-European linguistics soon after his return to Poland. After obtaining the title, he became a professor at the University of Lwów. Later on, in 1946-48 Kuryłowicz filled in for Dr Krzyżanowski at the Institute of English Philology in Wrocław. Finally, he moved to Kraków, where he took the chair of General Linguistics at Jagiellonian University. He retired in 1965. Kuryłowicz was a member of the Polish Academy of Learning and the Polish Academy of Science. He died at the age of 83 in Kraków.