Noam Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 7, 1928. He studied linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1955, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and began teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

During the years 1951 to 1955, Chomsky was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows. While a Junior Fellow he completed his doctoral dissertation entitled, “Transformational Analysis.” The major theoretical viewpoints of the dissertation appeared in the monograph Syntactic Structure, which was published in 1957 and is widely credited with having revolutionized the field of modern linguistics. This formed part of a more extensive work, The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, circulated in mimeograph in 1955 and published in 1975.

In 1961, Chomsky was appointed full professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (now the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy) at MIT. From 1966 to 1976 he held the Ferrari P. Ward Professorship of Modern Languages and Linguistics. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor, a position he held until 2002.

Chomsky is the author of numerous best-selling political works, including, most recently, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan Books).

He is the author of 9–11 (Seven Stories Press), Rogue States (South End Press), Understanding Power (New Press), New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind (Cambridge University Press), The Minimalist Program (MIT Press), and many other titles.

In 1988, Chomsky received the Kyoto Prize in Basic Science, given “to honor those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual development of mankind.” The prize noted that “Dr. Chomsky’s theoretical system remains an outstanding monument of 20th century science and thought. He can certainly be said to be one of the great academicians and scientists of this century.”

Chomsky lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

More on Noam Chomsky:
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/chomsky.home.html
http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/bibliography/noam.html

Watch Noam Chomsky on Book TV
Listen to Noam Chomsky's chat transcript on MSNBC discussing his book, Hegemony or Survival.

Noam Chomsky participates in two films distributed by Zeitgeist: Manufacturing Consent and The Corporation

Praise for Noam Chomsky:

"Arguably the most important intellectual alive."
--The New York Times

"Noam Chomsky is one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions; he goes against every assumption about American altruism and humanitarianism."
--Edward Said

"Reading Chomsky is like standing in a wind tunnel. With relentless logic, Chomsky bids us to listen closely to what our leaders tell us--and to discern what they are leaving out...The questions Chomsky raises will eventually have to be answered. Agree with him or not, we lose out by not listening."
--Business Week

"[Chomsky has] a proud defensive independence, a good plain writer's hatred of expert mystification, a doctrine of resistance which runs against the melioristic and participatory current of most contemporary intellectual life....Such men are dangerous; the lack of them is disasterous."
--New Statesman

"[Chomsky] continues to challenge our assumptions long after other critics have gone to bed. He has become the foremost gadfly of our national conscience."
--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times Book Review

"One of the West's most influential intellectuals in the cause of peace."
The Independent

"For nearly thirty years now, Noam Chomsky has parsed the main proposition of American power--what they do is aggression, what we do upholds freedom--with encyclopedic attention to detail and an unflagging sense of outrage."
--Utne Reader

"A searing criticism of the system of values and decision-making that drove the United States into the jungles of Southeast Asia."
--Michael R. Beschloss, The Washington Post Book World on American Power and the New Mandarins

"Chomsky's fierce talent proves once more that human beings are not condemned to become commodities."
--Eduardo Galeano

"Chomsky strips away layers of propaganda not recognized as propaganda, brilliantly sifting through political discourse."
--John Pilger

"Better than anyone else now writing, Chomsky combines indignation with insight, erudition with moral passion. That is a difficult achievement, and an encouraging one."
--In These Times

"9-11 was practically the only counter-narrative out there at a time when questions tended to be drowned out by a chorus, led by the entire United States Congress, of 'God Bless America.' It was one one of the few places where the other side of the case could be found; and intelligent patriotism entails knowing the arguments you have to answer. And, outlandish as it may seem to most Americans today, it is possible that, if the United States goes the way of nineteenth-century Britain, Chomsky's interpretation will be the standard among historians a hundred years from now."
--The New Yorker on 9-11

"This is a jeremiad in the prophetic tradition, an awesome work of latter-day forensic scholarship by a radical critic of America and Israel"
--The Boston Globe on Fateful Triangle

"This book contains liberatory knowledge...[there is] an incredible amount of new research and understanding to be gained from reading these important chapters....[A] major contribution to the history of women in the U.S."
--Counterpoise on Turning the Tide

"A major contribution to understanding political repression inflicted by the CIA and its related services on millions around the globe and the economic requirements behind such repression... A must reading for all those who would resist."
--Philip Agee on The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism

"[A] valuable, carefully documented assessment of Western reporting on post-1975 Indochina. Especially comprehensive in its treatment of Cambodia, it provides a trenchant-and healthy-critique of news media coverage that has usually been as tendentious as that dealing with the early years of U.S. military intervention in Indochina."
--George Kahin, Cornell University on After the Cataclysm

“Noam Chomsky . . . is a major scholarly resource. Not to have read [him] is to court genuine ignorance.”
--The Nation

“Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare, and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanities.”
--The Guardian

"A detailed and careful reminder that just because someone in authority says something, it isn't necessarily true. Chomsky is speaking truth to power. In doing so he makes life better for each of us, offering us hope and strength."
--Peacework on Necessary Illusions

"Chomsky is one of the few Americans to consistently challenge the dominant social forces. He sees no developmental alternative short of social and structural change."
--World Development on Necessary Illusions

"A thought-provoking book brimming with important information. Chomsky is to be praised for his efforts to show that the major media, like the schools, function as propaganda organs of the state."
--American-Arab Affairs on Necessary Illusions