1879 - 1950
Alfred Korzybski was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist best known for developing the theory of general semantics. Born in 1879, he emphasized the ways in which language and symbols influence human behavior and perception, encapsulated in his famous phrase "the map is not the territory." Korzybski's work laid the foundation for various fields, including linguistics, communication theory, and cognitive science, and he founded the Institute of General Semantics in 1938.