Noam Chomsky, described as 'the father of modern linguistics' is well known for research across the whole of linguistics, and particularly for his work on linguistic competence, in which our knowledge and understanding of language (and pragmatics) is studied. He was born as Avram Noam Chomsky on the 7th December, 1928, in Philadelphia, America. He studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania from 1945, earning a BA in 1949 and in 1951 earned his MA. He achieved his PHD in Linguistics in 1955, and wrote one of his best known works; Syntactic Structures in 1955. He also went on to become a professor at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in that year, where he remains today, having become the Institute Professor in 1976.[1][2]