STEVEN PINKER, shown in his office at MIT, will join the psychology department next year. His most recent book, The Blank Slate, was a best-seller.

The path that led renowned cognitive scientist Steven Pinker from MIT to Harvard’s psychology department began with an invitation to eat dinner at Boston’s Green Street Grill.

That this invitation came from two of Harvard’s brightest academic stars helps explain how Harvard pulled off its latest hiring coup.

“I got a call from [DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis] ‘Skip’ Gates and he said, ‘How would you like to have dinner with me and [Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value] Elaine Scarry?’” Pinker says.

Pinker, who is currently a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, will occupy a newly created Mind, Brain, Behavior (MBB) chair in Harvard’s psychology department next year.

Pinker’s many friends in Harvard’s psychology department had often encouraged him to join Harvard’s faculty. He says that this was not the first time the University had tried to recruit him, recalling an offer made by Harvard in 1988.

But according to Pinker, it was this meal that started his drift towards Harvard.

“[Scarry’s work] is an interesting connection between cognitive psychology—what I do—and English literature, and reminded me that Harvard, as a university with experts in every field, would be a very stimulating place,” Pinker says.

Pinker says that Scarry and Gates initially proposed that he join the University’s English department, but that he felt more comfortable in the psychology department.

The announcement earlier this month that Pinker had accepted Harvard’s offer generated excitement among many students and faculty, but also prompted speculation about what convinced him to come.

According to several professors in the psychology department and at Harvard Medical School (HMS), University President Lawrence H. Summers may have played an unusually direct role in persuading Pinker to come.

The president is required to approve all senior faculty appointments, but Summers may have become involved in the process much earlier.

“The rumor is that Summers read Pinker’s works and really enjoyed them and wanted him here,” said Professor of Psychology Alfonso Caramazza.

Pinker says that Summers has read his book, How the Mind Works, and that he has attended events at Summers’s home.

He also says that Summers contacted him earlier this year to encourage him to accept Harvard’s offer.

Summers has expressed a desire to hire younger scholars, and those whose work bridges conventional departmental divisions.