Richard Montague was an American logician and philosopher, best known for his work in formal semantics and the development of Montague grammar. Born in 1930, he made significant contributions to the understanding of natural language and its relationship to formal logic, bridging the gap between linguistics and philosophy. Montague's approach involved treating natural languages like mathematics, using formal systems to analyze their structure and meaning. His work laid the foundation for modern theories in linguistics and influenced various fields, including computer science and artificial intelligence, by providing tools for understanding language processing and interpretation.