Geoffrey Nunberg

Geoffrey Nunberg (June 1, 1945 – August 11, 2020) was an American lexical semantician and author. In 2001 he received the Linguistics, Language, and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistic Society of America for his contributions to National Public Radio's Fresh Air, and he has published a number of popular press books including Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Controversial Times (2004). Nunberg is primarily known for his public-facing work interpreting linguistic science for lay audiences, though his contributions to linguistic theory are also well regarded.

Nunberg received his doctorate from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1977 for his dissertation, The Pragmatics of Reference. Prior to his PhD, Nunberg received a Bachelor's degree from Columbia College and a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied under William Labov. Following his education, Nunberg began working as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Berkeley and visiting professor at Stanford University. In the mid-1980s he moved to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where he worked until 2001. Following Xerox, he returned to research at universities, returning to appointments at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information and at Berkeley's School of Information.Following a long battle with cancer, Nunberg died August 11, 2020.