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Avram Noam Chomsky was born to Jewish immigrant parents on December 7, 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father Ze'ev "William" Chomsky believed that educating people was important so that they would be "well integrated, free and independent in their thinking". His family was influenced by Left Zionist writings of Ahad Ha'am. Aside from his family, he was also influenced by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, his uncle, and other Jewish leftists.
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Noam Chomsky wrote his first article at the age of 10 about how the fall of Barcelona during the Spanish Civil war sparked a rise in the spread of fascism. Since the age of 12 or 13, he identified with anarchist politics.
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At age 16 Chomsky began a non-specialized program of study at the University of Pennsylvania. There, he expressed interest in logic, philosophy and languages.
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Noam Chomsky was a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University for four years. This is where he researched his doctoral dissertation. He was encouraged by Nelson Goodman who tutored him in philosophy at University of Pennsylvania. Chomsky had a special interest in studying at Harvard because this was where the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine was based.
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In 1952 Chomsky published his first academic article called "Systems of Syntactic Analysis" in The Journal of Symbolic Logic. This journal is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal that was established in 1936. It covers mathematical logic and is still publishing articles today.
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In 1959 he published a review of B.F. Skinner's 1957 book "Verbal Behavior" in the academic journal Language. He argued against Skinner's perception of language as being learned behavior. He believed that Skinner should've acknowledged the role of human creativity in linguistics more in his book.
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