The Levin Family Dean’s Forum Lecture
Dr. Steven Pinker
Harvard professor, experimental psychologist, popular science writer
“The Stuff of Thought”
About Dr. Steven Pinker
A rigorous experimental psychologist and popular science writer, Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard, has won acclaim and sparked debate for work that explains how words relate to thoughts and what that tells us about ourselves. His research on cognition and language has won the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Dale Prize from the Royal Institute of Great Britain and two prizes from the American Psychological Association. He is also the recipient of four honorary doctorates and numerous awards for graduate and undergraduate teaching, and he has been named a Humanist Laureate and the 2006 Humanist of the Year.
Pinker has appeared in many television documentaries and frequently writes for the popular press on subjects such as language and politics, the neural basis of consciousness and the genetic enhancement of human beings. He is the author of five general audience books, including the critically acclaimed The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Blank Slate. His newest book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, was a New York Times bestseller, and it investigates what the words we use reveal about the way we think. Pinker’s books have won the William James Book Prize three times, the Los Angeles Times Science Book Prize and the Eleanor Maccoby Book Prize.
Pinker earned his bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from McGill University in Montreal and his doctorate from Harvard in 1979. Prior to his current stint at Harvard, he taught for more than two decades at MIT, and also spent two years in California as an assistant professor at Stanford and on sabbatical for a year at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He currently also serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards, including the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary and the scientific advisory board for "The Decade of Behavior."
About the Levin Family Dean’s Forum
The Levin Family Dean's Forum is a celebration of the arts and sciences. Initiated in 1984, the Forum presents leading intellectual figures who exemplify the richness of the liberal arts. It also recognizes outstanding undergraduate and graduate students for their academic achievement and intellectual promise. The Levin Family Dean's Forum is made possible by a generous gift from Stephen A. Levin, C'67, in honor of his son Eric T. Levin, C'92.
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