Steven Pinker (born September 18, 1954, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) Canadian-born American psychologist who advocated evolutionary explanations for the functions of the brain and thus for language and behaviour. Pinker was raised in a largely Jewish neighbourhood of Montreal. He studied cognitive science at McGill University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1976. He earned a doctorate in experimental psychology at Harvard University in 1979. After stints as an assistant professor at Harvard (1980–81) and at Stanford University (1981–82), he joined the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There he served ...(100 of 651 words)