Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Known 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 holds a joint appointment as Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona, and is the author of more than 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media.

Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

One of the most cited scholars alive, Chomsky has impacted a wide range of academic fields.

He is widely known as having helped to start the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind.

Besides his continued scholarship, he is still a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neoliberalism and contemporary state capitalism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mainstream news media. His ideas are very influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements.