For decades, Chomsky was the most-cited author who still had a pulse. And a lot of that was for his political writing - maybe 2/3rds? But he still has a lot of cites for his intellectual work, in several different fields.

Linguistics, obviously.

Philosophers love him, because he always gives them an argument, and that's all they really care about.

There probably wouldn't even be cognitive science without Chomsky. And psychology is still responding to Chomsky's nuking of behaviorism in the 1950's.

So, there's a lot there, but admittedly most of it is for politics.

Without question.

Just look at his Wikipedia entry. He finished his dissertation in 1955, starting teaching at MIT the same year, and continued to publish seminal linguistic works over the next 12 years. That's all before he gained any notoriety whatsoever as a critic of the U.S.'s role in the Vietnam War.

Manufacturing Consent was published in 1988!

Additionally, I strongly doubt Chomsky had any "name recognition" all the way through to the late 90s. Outside of a single episode of Firing Line, where would the general public have heard his views?

Every introductory book in theoretical computer science will have a discussion of the Chomsky language hierarchy. It is hugely insightful and helpful.

Not with laypeople, but among cognitive scientists, absolutely.

Yup, no regular expressions without his theory.

I was a computer science student and an anti-war activist while at UCLA in the late 1960's. I learned of Chomsky's hierarchy of formal languages before I learned of his politics.

No offense but your question is terribly ignorant, naive, and biased. Just spend a few seconds reading his Wikipedia article.

I mean, his linguistic work was a very, very big deal