Robert M. Sapolsky

Robert M. Sapolsky is an American neuroendocrinologist, primatologist and popular-science writer. He earned his doctorate from Rockefeller University and became a professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford. His research has examined stress and its effects on the brain, while his fieldwork followed wild baboons in East Africa. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987.

Sapolsky writes at the meeting point of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, primatology and social thought. His books resist single-cause explanations: hormones, genes and neurons matter, but so do childhood, culture, social rank and immediate circumstances. He makes dense research approachable through humor, vivid examples and an energetic essayistic voice.

His books include Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, on the biology and consequences of stress; A Primate’s Memoir, drawn from his years of fieldwork; and Determined, which argues that human action leaves no room for free will. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology.

Start with Behave. It is the broadest introduction to Sapolsky’s work, moving backward from the instant before an action through hormones, development, culture and evolution. Its central subject is difficult and immediate: how the same species becomes capable of cruelty, cooperation, prejudice and compassion.