person1957–

Robert M. Sapolsky

Disciplines:

Summary

American neuroendocrinologist — Stanford (biology and neuroscience) — author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, and Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will — who studies stress hormones in baboons and writes the most accessible synthesis of biology and human behavior.

Core Contribution

Creates Behave as the most comprehensive biology-of-behavior synthesis — Sapolsky's account (explaining any human behavior by working backwards through the milliseconds before, seconds before, hours before, years before, and evolutionary time before) is the most complete single-volume account of how biology shapes human action.

Key Spikes & Highlights

Spent 30+ years driving to the Kenyan savanna every summer to follow the same baboon troop — his long-term field data on baboon stress and social hierarchy is the most comprehensive primate stress dataset in existence; his 2004 paper documenting how the troop's culture changed after its aggressive males died of tuberculosis (becoming peaceful and remaining so across generations) is the most powerful evidence for social transmission of cultural behavior in primates
Announced he has been diagnosed with a movement disorder that is gradually disabling him — he has given his 'last lecture' several times at Stanford, each time to standing ovations; his public continuation of work while disabled is the most documented case of sustained intellectual output against physical deterioration in contemporary neuroscience

Notable Works & Achievements

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

A Primate's Memoir

Behave

Determined

Historical Influences

E.O. Wilson Jane Goodall Hans Selye

Intellectual Lineage

Brooklyn Harvard Rockefeller Stanford Kenya field work

Contemporaries & Peers

Frans de Waal Daniel Lieberman Richard Wrangham

Minds Influenced

Biology-behavior popular science

Intellectual Posterity

Behave Determined A Primate's Memoir Sapolsky as stress-behavior scientist

Discussing