The article focuses on the 100th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Russian methodologist Joseph Lvovich Vitlin. The main stages of his life and the key milestones of his creative biography are considered. The process of the formation of Vitlin’s scientific views is tracked, his contribution to the psychology and theory of teaching foreign languages to adults is characterized. A brief description of the most important monograph by J.L. Vitlin Teaching Adults a Foreign Language: Questions of Theory and Practice (1978) is given.