Noam Chomsky.

At age 10, Noam Chomsky wrote his first political article, on the fight against fascism in Spain. He had been born in 1928 in Philadelphia to parents Ze’ev William Chomsky, a Hebrew scholar, and Elise Simon Chomsky, and attended Oak Lane Day School and Central High School, where he experienced progressive education.

His father’s academic influence and Philadelphia’s intellectual environment drew him to linguistics. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, earning his PhD in 1955.

Chomsky’s 1957 monograph Syntactic Structures introduced transformational-generative grammar, revolutionizing linguistics. The work challenged behaviorist theories of language and laid the foundation for modern cognitive science.

In 1955, he joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and became a full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in 1961. From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship, and in 1976 he was named Institute Professor. His later works include Aspects of the Theory of Syntax 1965 and Cartesian Linguistics 1966. With Edward S. Herman, he co-authored Manufacturing Consent 1988.

He delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford in 1969 and the Bertrand Russell Memorial Lecture at Cambridge in 1970. He has received the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences 1988, the Helmholtz Medal 1995, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science 2009.

Chomsky married Carol Chomsky née Schatz on December 24, 1949; they remained married until her death on December 19, 2008. They had three children: Aviva, Diane, and Harry. In March 2014, he married Valeria Wasserman.

He has a brother, David Eli Chomsky. As of the 2020s, Chomsky resides in Tucson, Arizona, where he teaches at the University of Arizona.

Noam Chomsky’s linguistic work changed the scientific understanding of language and mind. His concept of universal grammar influenced fields from psychology to computer science. His political writings, especially Manufacturing Consent, have inspired generations of activists and critics of media and state power.

He has received more than 40 honorary degrees, including from Harvard, Cambridge, and the University of Buenos Aires. Chomsky is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of Canada. He is remembered as the father of modern linguistics and a voice for social justice.