Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist who conducts research in visual cognition, psycholinguistics, and social relations. He grew up in Montreal and earned his BA from McGill University (Canada) and his Ph.D. from Harvard University (USA). Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford University and MIT. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his ten books – including The Language Instinct. How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, and The Sense of Style: A Writing Manual for the 21st Century. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, and writes frequently for The New York Times, The Guardian, and other publications. His latest book is called Enlightenment.
The Ernst Mayr Lecture
The Ernst Mayr Lecture is devoted to the life sciences and was created in 1997 by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in tandem with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW).
The lecture series was named after the honorary member of the BBAW, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr (1904–2005), who inaugurated the eponymous series in the fall of 1997. Consistent with the title of its namesake’s chief work – The Growth of Biological Thought – the Ernst Mayr Lecture is designed to transmit current biological views.