Robert Sapolsky is a researching scientist, professor, and author. He was educated at Harvard University, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Biological Anthropology, summa cum laude, and at The Rockefeller University, where he earned his PhD in Neuroendocrinology.

Sapolsky works as a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research, a division of the National Museums of Kenya, where he has studied the baboons, he references throughout Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. He is a Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience and is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. Sapolsky has also prioritized disseminating science information among the general population. He has written several books, including Stress, the Aging Brain and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death (1992), The Trouble with Testosterone (1997), Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017), and Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (2023).

Sapolsky has helped bridge the gap between the general public and the science and academic communities. His popular science texts are written for the lay-reader, and his Stanford lecture series on Human Behavioral Biology is openly available online. His criticism of biases or gaps in science also foster trust by demonstrating that scientists or scientific studies are fallible but that they are separate from the process of science.