Alison Gopnik is professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, and a member of the Berkeley AI Research Group. She received her BA from McGill University and her PhD. from Oxford University.
She has received the APS Lifetime Achievement Cattell and William James Awards, the SRCD Lifetime Achievement Award, the APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, the Bradford Washburn and Carl Sagan Awards for Science Communication, and the Rumelhart Prize for Theoretical Foundations of Cognitive Science. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Cognitive Science Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Guggenheim Fellow. She was 2022-23 President of the Association for Psychological Science. She is the author of over 160 journal articles and several books including the bestselling and critically acclaimed popular books “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 The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and The Atlantic, among others. Gopnik has appeared extensively on TV, radio, and podcasts, including The Colbert Report, the Charlie Rose show, Radio Lab, and the Ezra Klein show.