Steven Arthur Pinker is a renowned Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. Born on September 18, 1954, Pinker is a staunch advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

He holds the prestigious position of the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His academic work specializes in visual cognition and developmental linguistics, covering subjects like mental imagery, shape recognition, visual attention, language regularity and irregularity, and childhood language development. Pinker is also interested in the psychology of cooperation and communication, including emotional expression and innuendo.

Pinker has authored several influential books such as The Language Instinct (1994), How the Mind Works (1997), Words and Rules (2000), The Blank Slate (2002), and The Stuff of Thought (2007), which explore aspects of psycholinguistics and cognitive science. His book The Sense of Style (2014) serves as a language-oriented style guide. The Better Angels of Our Nature (2010) proposes that violence in human societies has generally declined over time, and Enlightenment Now (2018) argues that human conditions have improved due to reason, science, and humanism.

Pinker has been recognized as one of Time's "The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today" and has appeared in Foreign Policy's "Top 100 Global Thinkers". His contributions have earned awards from the American Psychological Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and other prestigious bodies.