Myrna Gopnik is a Professor Emerita of Linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 at McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

. She is known for her discovery of the FOXP2 gene

FOXP2

Forkhead box protein P2 also known as FOXP2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the FOXP2 gene, located on human chromosome 7 . FOXP2 orthologs have also been identified in all mammals for which complete genome data are available...

 (popularly referred to as "the language gene") through research on the KE family

KE family

The KE family is an extended family, about half of whom exhibit severe forms of specific language impairment . The genetic trace across many individuals spanning three generations of the family has been the subject of intense worldwide research since at least 1990, concerning the genetic origin of...

, an English family with several members affected by specific language impairment

Specific language impairment

Specific language impairment is diagnosed when a child's language does not develop normally and the difficulties cannot be accounted for by generally slow development , physical abnormality of the speech apparatus, autistic disorder, acquired brain damage or hearing loss.-Overview:Specific...

. Her son Adam

Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik, is an American writer, essayist and commentator. He is best known as a staff writer for The New Yorker—to which he has contributed non-fiction, fiction, memoir and criticism—and as the author of the essay collection Paris to the Moon, an account of five years that Gopnik, his wife...

 is a well-known novelist and writer for the New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

 and her daughter Alison

Alison Gopnik

Alison Gopnik , daughter of Myrna Gopnik, is an American Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is known for her work in the areas of cognitive and language development, specializing in causal learning and theory of mind...

 is a developmental psychology

Developmental psychology

Developmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...

 professor at UC-Berkeley.

See also

• FOXP2
  FOXP2
  Forkhead box protein P2 also known as FOXP2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the FOXP2 gene, located on human chromosome 7 . FOXP2 orthologs have also been identified in all mammals for which complete genome data are available...
  
  
• KE family
  KE family
  The KE family is an extended family, about half of whom exhibit severe forms of specific language impairment . The genetic trace across many individuals spanning three generations of the family has been the subject of intense worldwide research since at least 1990, concerning the genetic origin of...
  
  

Dr. Gopnik is generally credited with an important early evaluation of the KE family, and with making this family known to the wider scientific community. This subsequently led to the identification of the FOXP2 gene, sometimes called "the language gene" by Dr. Anthony Monaco and colleagues at Oxford University. (see: A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder. Lai CS, Fisher SE, Hurst JA, Vargha-Khadem F, Monaco AP.
Nature. 2001 vol. 413(6855):pp.519-23.)