Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Dr. Robert Sapolsky (b. 1957) is a primatologist (someone who studies monkeys and apes) and neuroscientist (someone who studies the brain and nervous system) who teaches biology, neurology, and neuroscience at Stanford University. He received his bachelor’s degree in biological anthropology summa cum laude from Harvard University, after which he began his career as a primatologist observing the behavior of baboons and collecting samples of their blood in Kenya. He continued this primatological study every summer for 25 years, which he discusses in his book A Primate’s Memoir. Sapolsky received his PhD in neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University in the 1980s. His scientific work focuses on topics of stress and neuronal degeneration, including stress in wild animals. Throughout his career he has received several awards and accolades and has published widely in scholarly journals as well as public-facing scientific contexts, particularly on the topics of human behavior from an evolutionary perspective. Today he is one of the United States’ more renowned living biologists.