Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author, born in Montreal, Quebec, in 1954. He is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and previously taught in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Pinker is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind, and for his research on language and cognition.

Pinker has written both technical works and widely read books for general audiences, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment Now, Rationality, and The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. His books have received multiple awards, and in 2004 he was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”