Noam Chomsky is a linguist.
Noam Chomsky . Sometimes described as `` the father of modern linguistics '' , Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science . He is Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ) , where he has worked since 1955 , and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics , war , politics , and mass media . At the age of sixteen he began studies at the University of Pennsylvania , taking courses in linguistics , mathematics , and philosophy . That year he began teaching at MIT , in 1957 emerging as a significant figure in the field of linguistics for his landmark work Syntactic Structures , which remodeled the scientific study of language , while from 1958 to 1959 he was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study .