Steven Pinker

About the author

Steven Pinker, born in Montreal in 1954, is a Canadian cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, and one of the most widely read public intellectuals in science today. Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, he champions evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. His nine books for general audiences — from The Language Instinct (1994) to Rationality (2021) — argue that language is an evolved instinct, that human violence has declined over time, and that reason and science have steadily improved the human condition.

Time named him among its 100 Most Influential People in 2004.