Born to a Jewish family in Amsterdam, Jacob Samuel Speyer first attended the Gymnasium before joining the Athenaeum Illustre at the age of not yet 16.

[1] He afterwards studied classics at Amsterdam for three years, and then Sanskrit at the University of Leiden, from where he awarded a Ph.D. on 21 December 1872.

On 15 October 1877, he was appointed lecturer in Sanskrit and comparative philology at the University of Amsterdam, and he was about to receive a professorship there when he was called to Gröningen as professor of Latin in December 1888.

He held this chair until 20 March 1903, when he was appointed to succeed his former teacher Hendrik Kern as professor of Sanskrit at the University of Leiden.

He was a member of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences from 1889,[2] and a knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.