Michael Tomasello

Michael Tomasello (born January 18, 1950) is an American developmental and comparative psychologist, as well as linguist. He is co-director of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, co-director of the Wolfgang Kohler Primate Research Center, honorary professor at University of Leipzig and at Manchester University's Department of Psychology, and professor of psychology at Duke University. Earning many prizes and awards from the end of the 1990s onward, he is considered one of today's most authoritative developmental and comparative psychologists. He is "one of the few scientists worldwide who is acknowledged as an expert in multiple disciplines". His "pioneering research on the origins of social cognition has led to revolutionary insights in both developmental psychology and primate cognition."