Lotman graduated from the secondary school in 1939 with excellent marks and was admitted to Leningrad State University without having to pass any exams.

[citation needed] His professors at university were the renowned lecturers and academicians Gukovsky, Azadovsky, Tomashevsky and Propp.

[citation needed] Lotman moved to the Estonian SSR in 1950, where he started teaching Russian literature while working on his dissertation (aspirantura), which he defended at the Leningrad State University in 1952.

[4] In the early '60s Lotman established academic contacts with a group of structuralist linguists in Moscow, and invited them in the first Summer School on Secondary Modeling Systems, that took place in Kääriku from 19th to 29 August 1964.

[6] Juri Lotman's wife Zara Mints was also a well-known scholar of Russian literature and Tartu professor.