Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1897–1941)

US linguist and chemical engineer. Through his work in comparative linguistics in studies of Hebrew, Mayan, Aztec, and Hopi languages and cultures, he developed the ‘Whorf-Sapir hypothesis’: namely, that the grammatical structure of a language affects the culture of its speakers by conditioning the ways in which they think.

Whorf was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts. After receiving his BSc in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1918, he began a lucrative, lifelong career at the Hartford Fire Insurance Company (1919–41), where he specialized in fire hazards and prevention. In 1925 he renewed a childhood interest in Central America and in 1930 he travelled to Mexico. In 1931 he enrolled in Edward Sapir's American Indian linguistics course at Yale University.