Steven Pinker

Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

Steven Pinker received his bachelor’s degree in experimental psychology from McGill University and afterwards moved to Cambridge in 1976 to earn his Ph.D. at Harvard University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT and teaching at Harvard and Stanford, he became a professor of psychology in MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, where he taught from 1982 to 2003. He is currently Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology. Professor Pinker is an experimental psychologist who is interested in all aspects of language and the mind. In addition to many award-winning scholarly papers and books, he has written five books for general audiences, including The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature and The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. He frequently writes for The New York Times, Time, and The New Republic, among other publications.