Steven Pinker

Pinker was born on September 18, 1954, in Montreal, Canada, and received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from McGill University in 1976.⁠[1]

He describes growing up in Montreal’s English-speaking Jewish community; his father, Harry Pinker (1928–2015), was a salesman, small landlord and lawyer, and his mother, Rose “Roslyn” Wiesenfeld Pinker (1934–2023), was a guidance counselor and vice-principal of Bialik High School in Montreal; the writer Susan Pinker is his sister.⁠[2]

In 1979 he received a PhD in experimental psychology from Harvard University and then held a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT.⁠[1]

After one-year teaching posts at Harvard and Stanford, Pinker joined the MIT faculty in 1982 and spent 21 years there, ultimately as Peter de Florez Professor of Psychology in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.⁠[3]

In 1988 Pinker and Alan Prince published “On Language and Connectionism” in the journal CognitionCognitionCognition is a U.S. artificial intelligence company founded by Scott Wu, Walden Yan and Steven Hao that develops the autonomous AI software engineer Devin. It launched Devin in March 2024, acquired the AI coding tool Windsurf in July 2025, and announced a Series E exceeding $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation in September 2026. Its annualized revenue passed $1 billion that month.Open the full entry, analyzing and criticizing Rumelhart and McClelland’s parallel distributed processing model of the English past tense, part of a debate in cognitive science between symbolic and connectionist approaches.⁠[4]

In 1994 he published The Language Instinct, arguing that language is a human instinct “wired into our brains” by evolution and that the mind is a collection of instincts adapted to solving evolutionarily significant problems.⁠[5]

How the Mind Works, published in 1997, won the 1997 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was shortlisted for that year’s National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize.⁠[6]

In 2002 Viking published his The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, which criticizes the doctrine that the mind has no innate traits and argues for an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.⁠[7]

In April 2003 Pinker accepted an endowed professorship at Harvard University, starting that July; he said he was leaving MIT only because he had been there 21 years and would not have such an opportunity again.⁠[3]

He was named to the Time 100 in 2004, was the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year in 2006, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.⁠[1]

In 2011 he published The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, which argues that violence has declined over long stretches of history and that today may be the most peaceful moment in the species’ existence.⁠[8]

The philosopher John Gray criticized the book’s statistics as murky, leaving many casualties of violence unaccounted for; Pinker replied that Gray was “howlingly, flat-earth, couldn’t-be-more-wrong wrong.”⁠[9]

His 2014 writing guide The Sense of Style champions “classic prose” that is direct, economical and precise; the reviewer Jacob Silverman found it graceful and convincing but more utilitarian than aesthetic.⁠[10]

Enlightenment Now, published in 2018, uses data to argue that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge and happiness are rising worldwide; Bill GatesBill GatesBill Gates is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist who cofounded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975 and served as its chief executive and chairman. He later shifted his focus toward global health, education and climate, chairs the Gates Foundation, and manages investments through arrangements including Cascade.Open the full entry called it “my new favorite book of all time.”⁠[11]

On October 17, 2018, he appeared on episode 3 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, titled “AI in the Age of Reason”; in the episode description Fridman cited the influence of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now on him.⁠[12]

In July 2020 more than 550 academics signed an open letter that pointed to six of his tweets and wording in one of his books and asked the Linguistic Society of America to revoke his distinguished fellow status; the society’s executive committee declined to act, saying it was not its mission to control members’ opinions.⁠[13]

Pinker called his critics “speech police” and worried that such campaigns could discourage junior faculty with dissenting views.⁠[13]

In 2021 Viking published his Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, which argues that humans are not simply irrational: people reason sensibly in everyday settings but often fail to use tools such as logic, probability and critical thinking.⁠[14]

In April 2023 Pinker and more than 70 Harvard professors formed the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, with Pinker as one of six co-presidents; in an op-ed with Harvard Medical School professor Bertha Madras he wrote that the group would encourage policies that protect academic freedom.⁠[15]

In May 2025, after the federal government moved to cancel more than $2 billion in research grants to Harvard and to halt its enrollment of international students, Pinker called the actions “out-and-out authoritarianism,” while acknowledging that Harvard has problems.⁠[16]

On September 23, 2025, Scribner published his thirteenth book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life, which explores the role of common knowledge in social life.⁠[17]

He is Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard and a member of Lowell House’s senior common room, has chaired the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian and other publications.⁠[18]

He lives in Boston and Truro with the philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.⁠[2]

Personal website: Public link: https://stevenpinker.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[2]

X: Public account: https://x.com/sapinker (opens in a new window)⁠[2]