Janet Dean Fodor was born in London on April 12, 1942, the youngest of 3 girls. She received her bachelor’s degree from Oxford University studying philosophy and psychology; her tutor was Iris Murdoch. She attended Stanford University in psychology for a year, but realized that she wanted to study linguistics, and transferred to MIT, where she received her Ph.D. in 1970. She spent 13 years on the faculty of the University of Connecticut, where she mentored scholars such as Lyn Frazier. She then moved in 1986 to CUNY Graduate Center and was emerita from 2021.