At home: Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker, the Canadian experimental psychologist and author, presents a friendly front. A receptionist in the Harvard psychology department where he teaches describes him as "gentle". And amid the high-strung Harvard world of academic divas and their curt assistants, he is unusual in arranging his own interviews, and warmly welcomes visitors to his loft apartment in Boston. Yet in print, Pinker, 58, who shot to stardom 18 years ago with his first bestseller, The Language Instinct, has not hesitated to attack what he considers to be decades of prevailing views by arguing that human nature is not shaped by culture but is a function of brain design and natural selection. "Evolution is an indispensable component of any satisfying explanation of our psychology. The human mind is not a blank slate," says Pinker, who wrote a book with the same title, and has played a key role in adding evolutionary theory to the study of our mental life, from emotions to decision-making and how we acquire language.