Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. He was born Avram Noam Chomsky on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Chomsky both earned his undergraduate and MA degrees as well as PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. He is sometimes referred to as the “father of modern linguistics” and is a major figure in analytic philosophy.

Between 1951 and 1955, Noam Chomsky served in the Harvard University’s Society of Fellows. In 1985, he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became a significant figure in the field of linguistics through his publications and lectures on the subject. He has spent most of his career at MIT, where he now serves as Professor Emeritus.

Chomsky is also an author of more than 100 books. He has been an influential academic figure especially in the field of Arts and Humanities between 1980 and 1992. During the same period, he was the eighth overall most cited scholar within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index.

Chomsky has also influenced several other fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, political science, programming language theory and psychology. A well-known political activist and prominent political figure, he was voted the “world’s top public intellectual” in a 2005 poll.