Robert Sapolsky

Robert M. Sapolsky (b. 1957) is John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University. Robert Sapolsky received his AB in biological anthropology summa cum laude from Harvard University and subsequently attended Rockefeller University where he received his PhD is Neuroendocrinology working in the lab of Bruce McEwen, a world-renowned endocrinologist. His research focuses on issues of stress and neuron degeneration, as well as on the possibilities of gene therapy strategies and gene transfer techniques for help in protecting susceptible neurons from disease, identifying the role of glucocorticoids as important to such processes.

He is the author of three prominent books, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers (1994), The Trouble with Testosterone (1997), and A Primate's Memoir (2001), and is often praised as a great scientific writer. He is a winner of a MacArthur "genius" grant and Stanford University's Bing Award for Teaching Excellence. A new collection of essays, "Monkeyluv and Other Essays on our Lives as Animals", was published in fall 2005.

Selected works

 * Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death (MIT Press, 1992) ISBN 0262193205
 * The Trouble with Testosterone: And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament (Scribner, 1997) ISBN 0684838915
 * A Primate's Memoir (Touchstone Books, 2002) ISBN 0743202473
 * Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers (Holt/Owl 3rd Rep. Ed. 2004) ISBN 0805073698
 * Monkeyluv : And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals (Scribner, Fall 2005) ISBN 0743260155
 * "Are the Desert People Winning?" Discover magazine, August 2005, Vol.26, #8, p. 38–41