Alison Gopnik
Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Berkeley
Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her BA from McGill University and her PhD from Oxford University. She is a recognized leader in the study of children’s learning and development and was one of the founders of "theory of mind," an originator of the "theory theory" of children's development, and more recently introduced the idea that probabilistic models and Bayesian inference could be applied to children's learning. Gopnik is the author or co-author of over 100 articles and several books including Words, Thoughts, and Theories, 1997; The Scientist in the Crib, 1999; The Philosophical Baby, 2009; and The Gardener and the Carpenter, 2016. She has written widely about cognitive science and psychology for Science, The New York Times, Scientific American, and other major publications. Since 2013 she has written the “Mind and Matter” column for The Wall Street Journal.