AGE: 79
OCCUPATION: Linguist-philospher
NUMBER OF TIME COVERS: 0
PREVIOUS APPEARANCES ON THE TIME 100: 0
PRO: On staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1955, the known lefty-wing political commentator has changed the field of linguistics by contributing the idea of transformational grammar, which states that humans possess an innate ability to learn language.
CON: Linguistics, really? Who's comparing sentence structure when there's war, famine, and environmental disasters taking over the world? Being a fave of Chavez can't help, either.