Noam Chomsky

About the author

Born in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928, Noam Chomsky is an American philosopher, linguist, and political activist sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics." His 1957 landmark work Syntactic Structures reshaped the study of language, and he went on to develop transformational grammar, universal grammar, the generative grammar theory, and the Chomsky hierarchy. A longtime professor at MIT and currently laureate professor at the University of Arizona, he has authored more than 150 books.

Since the 1960s he has also been a prominent left-wing critic of U.S. foreign policy and contemporary capitalism.