Gilles Fauconnier was a distinguished scholar in linguistics whose work bridged cognitive science and language studies. He obtained an engineering degree in mathematics and physics from the École Polytechnique in Paris in 1965, a D.E.A. in mathematical logic and the algebra of categories from the University of Paris in 1967, a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, San Diego in 1971 under advisor S.Y. Kuroda, a Doctorate in Linguistics from the University of Paris-VIII in 1973, and a Docteur ès Lettres et Sciences Humaines from the University of Paris-VII in 1976. Early in his career, he taught at the École Polytechnique and in the Language Sciences program at the University of Paris-VIII, and served as Director of Research at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in France.

In 1988, Fauconnier joined the University of California, San Diego as a founding professor in the Department of Cognitive Science, later serving as department chair, advancing to Distinguished Professor in 2002, Distinguished Research Professor in 2008, and retiring as Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 2013. His research interests encompassed language and cognition, semantic theory, pragmatics, and meaning construction. He pioneered Mental Spaces Theory in his book Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language (French edition 1984; English MIT Press 1985, reprinted Cambridge University Press 1994), addressing referential opacity, indirect reference, metaphor, and metonymy. With Mark Turner, he developed the theory of conceptual blending, elaborated in Mappings in Thought and Language (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities (Basic Books, 2002). He co-edited Spaces, Worlds, and Grammar (University of Chicago Press, 1996) with Eve Sweetser. Fauconnier's interdisciplinary approach profoundly shaped cognitive linguistics worldwide. Among his honors were Fulbright scholarships in 1968 and 1984, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998, election as a Fellow of the American Philosophical Society in 1999, and a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1999-2000. He passed away on February 3, 2021.

Professional Email: gfauconnier@ucsd.edu