Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker (born September 18 1954, in Montreal, Canada) is one of the most prominent cognitive scientists today. He is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of a number of best-selling books. His research on language and cognition has won prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the American Psychological Association.

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September 18 - 1954 - Montreal - Canada - Cognitive scientists - Harvard University - National Academy of Sciences - Royal Institution of Great Britain - American Psychological Association

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Pinker was previously the director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a professor for 21 years before returning to Harvard in 2003. He earned a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honors in Psychology from McGill University in 1976, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Psychology from Harvard University in 1979.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology - McGill University

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Pinker has written about language and cognitive science for both scientists and the public. He is most famous for his work on how children acquire language and for his modernization and popularization of Noam Chomsky's work on language as an innate faculty of mind. Pinker has suggested an evolutionary mental module for language, but this idea remains controversial. Pinker's goes further than Chomsky, arguing many other human mental faculties are evolved, and is an ally of Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins in many evolutionary disputes. Pinker's books How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate remain seminal works of modern evolutionary psychology, which frames the mind as a kind of swiss-army knife equipped with evolutionary tools to deal with problems faced by early hominids. Pinker, associated with other cognitive philosophers such as Noam Chomsky (M.I.T) is now being recognized as a psychodarwinist. Psychodarwinists such as Chomsky or David Buss believe that while physical body parts evolve due to natural selection, the intellectual mind evolves the same way. This is a rapidly growing psychological field especially with cognitive psychologists.

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Language - Cognitive science - Acquire language - Noam Chomsky - Evolutionary - Mental module - Daniel Dennett - Richard Dawkins - How the Mind Works - The Blank Slate - Evolutionary psychology

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His most recent book The Blank Slate was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction and The Aventis Prizes for Science Books. In 2004, he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People.

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The Blank Slate - Pulitzer Prize - The Aventis Prizes for Science Books - 2004 - Time Magazine

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In January 2005, Pinker defended Lawrence Summers, President of Harvard University, whose comments about the gender gap in math and science angered much of the faculty.http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=505366

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Lawrence Summers - Gender gap

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