Robert Morris Sapolsky (born April 6, 1957) is an American academic, neuroscientist, and primatologist. He is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, and is a professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery. His research has focused on neuroendocrinology, particularly relating to stress. He is also a research associate at the National Museums of Kenya.[3]
Early life and education
Sapolsky was born in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrants from the Soviet Union. His father, Thomas Sapolsky, was an architect who renovated the restaurants Lüchow's and Lundy's.[4] Robert was raised an Orthodox Jew. He spent his time reading about and imagining living with silverback gorillas. By age twelve, he was writing fan letters to primatologists.[5] He attended John Dewey High School and by that time was reading textbooks on the subject and teaching himself Swahili.[6]
Sapolsky is an atheist.[7][8] He said in his acceptance speech for the Emperor Has No Clothes Award, "I was raised in an Orthodox household and I was raised devoutly religious up until around age thirteen or so. In my adolescent years one of the defining actions in my life was breaking away from all religious belief whatsoever."[9]
After the initial year-and-a-half field study in Africa, he returned every summer for another 25 years to observe the same group of baboons, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. He spent eight to ten hours a day for approximately four months each year recording the behaviors of these baboons.[15]
Career
Sapolsky is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor at Stanford University, holding joint appointments in several departments, including Biological Sciences, Neurology & Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery.[16]
As a neuroendocrinologist, he has focused his research on issues of stress and neuronal degeneration, as well as on the possibilities of gene-therapy strategies for protecting susceptible neurons from disease.[17] He is working on gene-transfer techniques to strengthen neurons against the disabling effects of glucocorticoids.[18] Each year, Sapolsky spends time in Kenya studying a population of wild baboons in order to identify the sources of stress in their environment, and the relationship between personality and patterns of stress-related disease in these animals.[19] More specifically, Sapolsky studies the differences in cortisol levels between the alpha male and female and the subordinates to determine stress level. An early but still relevant example of his studies of olive baboons is found in his 1990 Scientific American article "Stress in the Wild".[20] He has also written about neurological impairment and the insanity defense within the American legal system.[21][22]
Sapolsky has vigorously argued for a deterministic view of human behavior. According to him, "there is no free will, or at least that there is much less free will than generally assumed when it really matters".[39] He argues that human actions are determined by neurobiology, hormones, childhood, and life-circumstances.[22][40][41]
Sapolsky is married to Lisa Sapolsky, a doctor in neuropsychology. They have two children.[4] In 2024, Sapolsky launched a series of Father-Offspring Interviews on Youtube with his daughter Rachel.[49]
In his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Sapolsky discussed his personal experiences with depression, revealing the complexities of living with the condition while also highlighting moments of relief provided by medication.[50]
Views
In a podcast interview with Light Watkins called "Neuroscientist: How To Escape The Rat Race with Robert Sapolsky". YouTube., Robert Sapolsky says that after learning in synagogue about how God "hardened Pharaoh's heart," he woke up one night at 2am as a teenager and said "Oh, I get it! There is no god and there's no free will. The universe is this big, empty, indifferent place. And that's kinda where I've been at ever since."
In the same podcast interview, Robert is asked if making the case that there is no free will is to lead to a more egalitarian society. He first addresses the concerns that if the general public are taught that there is no free will, will there be murderers running around everywhere. He says "Obviously not. There must be a way of protecting society from dangerous people without telling the dangerous people they have rotten souls. It's a quarantine model and it's straight out of public health."
He then goes on to say, "If you believe in free will, it means you're okay with some people being treated way better than the average human for reasons they had nothing to do with and other people being treated way worse. And if you really go for this "there's no free will stuff," blame and punishment are intellectually and ethically gibberish, praise and reward are as well. Feeling that you have earned anything, that anyone has earned anything, that you are entitled to anything, that there's such a thing as justice being carried out, that there's such a thing as justice, none of that makes any sense at all. And you gotta navigate stuff from there." "Think about like what it is that you had no control over that got you into this wonderfully advantageous place. And what we're left with is that it's going to be mighty hard for everyone to decide that there's no freewill tomorrow and thus society just takes off from there with no more prisons, and no more meritocracy, and no more CEOs with corner offices. It's going to be incredibly hard."
^"Stress: Portrait of a Killer". Stress: Portrait of a Killer. Stanford University, National Geographic. 2008. Archived from the original on March 17, 2016. Retrieved August 25, 2014.
Sapolsky, Robert. Human Behavioral Biology, 25 lectures (Last 2 lectures were not taped / included in the official Stanford playlist but older versions/tapings of those lectures are available here).
