October 29, 2008
AMHERST, Mass.—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, will discuss “Language as a Window into Human Nature” on Monday, Nov. 10, at 7 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room of Amherst College’s Converse Hall. Sponsored by Victor S. Johnson Lectureship Fund, the talk is free and open to the public.
A native of Montreal, Pinker received a bachelor’s degree from McGill University and a doctorate in psychology from Harvard. After first teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for more than 20 years, he returned to Harvard in 2003 to serve in his current position. His experimental 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 has also received several honorary doctorates and numerous awards for graduate and undergraduate teaching and scholarly achievement, as well as for his books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate and, most recently, The Stuff of Thought. In addition, he has appeared in many television documentaries and writes frequently in the popular press, including in The New York Times, Time and The New Republic. He has been included among rankings of the world’s 100 most influential public intellectuals.
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