Robert Sapolsky

Robert Maurice Sapolsky (b. 1957) is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University.

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Education

Robert Sapolsky received his AB in biological anthropology summa cum laude from Harvard University and subsequently attended Rockefeller University where he received his PhD in Neuroendocrinology, working in the lab of Bruce McEwen, a world-renowned endocrinologist. He is currently (2006) a professor at Stanford University, holding joint appointments in several departments, including: Biological Sciences, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery.^[1]

Career

His current 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 currently teaches a class called "Human Behavioral Biology" at Stanford University. The class is one of the most popular classes on campus.

He is the author of several books, including Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and A Primate's Memoir. He is sometimes praised as one of the finest scientific writers of our time.^[2] He also has written for magazines and is a popular speaker.

Also he travels to Kenya yearly to study baboons as they are primates that are closely related to humans in their stress inducing environment. They are further similar to humans in that they have almost no natural predators and hence the majority of the their stress derives from their social functioning. More specifically, Sapolsky studies the cortisol levels between the Alpha male and female and the subordinates to determine stress level.

Honors

He is a MacArthur Fellow and has won Stanford's Bing Award for Teaching Excellence.

Trivia

Johnny Truant, the Metalcore band, used his name in a song title. He grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and was a childhood friend of journalist Ray Suarez.

Quotations

"Finish this lecture, go outside, and unexpectedly get gored by an elephant, and you are going to secrete glucocorticoids. There's no way out of it. You cannot psychologically reframe your experience and decide you did not like the shirt, here's an excuse to throw it out—that sort of thing."^[3]

"If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble."^[3]

"What's the punch line here? Physiologically, it doesn't come cheap being a bastard 24 hours a day."^[3]

See also

• Hans Selye
• Walter Bradford Cannon

Selected works

Books

• Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death (MIT Press, 1992) ISBN 0-262-19320-5
• Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers (1994, Holt/Owl 3rd Rep. Ed. 2004) ISBN 0-8050-7369-8
• The Trouble with Testosterone: And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament (Scribner, 1997) ISBN 0-684-83891-5
• Junk Food Monkeys (Headline Book Publishing, 1997) ISBN 978-0747276760
• A Primate's Memoir (Touchstone Books, 2002) ISBN 0-7432-0247-3
• Monkeyluv : And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals (Scribner, Fall 2005) ISBN 0-7432-6015-5
• "Are the Desert People Winning?" Discover magazine, August 2005, Vol.26, #8 , p. 38–41

Journal articles

• Sapolsky, Robert; Lewis C. Krey, and Bruce S. McEwen (25 September 2000). "The Neuroendocrinology of Stress and Aging: The Glucocorticoid Cascade Hypothesis". Science of Aging Knowledge Environment 38: 21.
• Sapolsky, Robert; L. Michael Romero and Allan U. Munck (2000). "How Do Glucocorticoids Influence Stress Responses? Integrating Permissive, Suppressive, Stimulatory, and Preparative Actions". Endocrine Reviews 21: 55-89.

Notes