Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential linguists of the 21st century. He published over seventy books during his lifetime and wrote over a thousand articles in many different fields, including linguistics. (Barsky 3). Chomsky's successes earned him much criticism, even though the work he produced forever shaped the idea of ​​language. First, his education and the crucial people involved in his life help others understand his ideas. Second, his book, Syntactic Structures, was critically important because of its advances in grammar and sentence structure. Finally, Chomsky reflects on the missing pieces of language and comments on language as a whole. All of these things help to understand why Chomsky is one of the best linguists of his time. On December 7, 1928, Avram Noam Chomsky was born. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the eldest in the family. His parents were both born in Russia but fled to the United States to avoid military conscription in 1913. Chomsky started school at just two years old. He went to Oak Lane Country Day School until the age of twelve (Barsky 15). Oak Lane Country Day School was run by Temple University, a very prestigious college. These ten years began to shape his thinking. Oak Lane believed in focusing more on creativity rather than grades. The administration has focused on competition with oneself rather than with others. They believed in encouraging students to go further. Chomsky said, "[It was] very different from what I noticed with my own children, who by second grade knew who was 'smart' and who was 'stupid,' and who was high-ranking and which was low. -follow up. It was a big problem. (Barsky 16). In high school, Chomsky began to realize...... middle of paper ......f Chomsky's life will forever be important to the development of language in society. His early childhood development helped shape his thinking about language. Dr. Chomsky and Elsie were influential in that they also had deeper thinking about language and politics that helped shape their son's views. Eventually, Chomsky took his studies into his own hands at the University of Pennsylvania, where his mentor, Zellig Sabbetai Harris, encouraged him to study the language. Next, Chomsky wrote Syntactic Structures in which he provides an overview of his ideas on sentence structures and grammatical formats. Finally, Chomsky ties his entire body of work together by commenting on language as a whole. It ties together some of the missing language elements. All these events and ideas helped make Noam Chomsky one of the most influential linguists of the 21st century..