Short answers, pulled from the story.
A French linguist named A. Dufriche-Desgenettes proposed the word phoneme in 1873 to replace the German term Sprachlaut. This proposal created the concept of the phoneme as a mental category rather than a physical sound.
Jan Baudouin de Courtenay shaped the modern usage of the term phoneme in a series of lectures delivered between 1876 and 1877. His work is considered the starting point of modern phonology despite Dufriche-Desgenettes having coined the word earlier.
Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy published Grundzüge der Phonologie posthumously in 1939. This text stands as one of the most important works in the field from that era and established Trubetzkoy as the founder of morphophonology.
Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle published The Sound Pattern of English in 1968. This publication established the basis for generative phonology and introduced the concept of distinctive features.
David Stampe founded natural phonology with publications in 1969 and more explicitly in 1979. His theory posits that phonology is based on a set of universal phonological processes that interact with one another.
Scholars like Juliette Blevins championed Evolutionary Phonology in recent years. This approach combines synchronic and diachronic accounts to understand how sound patterns emerge and change over time.