Carol A. Padden (born 1955 in Washington, D.C.) is an American academic, author, and lecturer.
She is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego, where she has been teaching since 1983.
Padden received a Bachelor's of Science degree in linguistics at Georgetown University in 1978.
[5] She received a PhD in linguistics at UC-San Diego in 1983 under the supervision of David Perlmutter.
[9] In 2010, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named Carol Padden a recipient of its so-called "genius" grant.
The foundation recognized Padden's pioneering work in the morphology and evolution of American Sign Language with a no-strings attached grant of $500,000.
[11] Padden's published writings encompass 43 works in 78 publications in 7 languages and 5,474 library holdings.