Early Life and Education
Sapolsky was born in Brooklyn, New York to immigrants from the Soviet Union. He was raised as an Orthodox Jew and spent his time reading about and imagining living with Silverback Gorillas. By age 12, he was writing fan letters to primatologists; he attended John Dewey High School and by that time, he was reading textbooks on the subject and teaching himself Swahili. Despite his Jewish upbringing, he has described himself as an atheist.
In 1978, Sapolsky received his B.A. in biological anthropology summa cum laude from Harvard University. He then went to Kenya to study the social behaviors of baboons in the wild; after which he returned to New York; studying at Rockefeller University, where he received his Ph.D. in Neuroendocrinology working in the lab of Bruce McEwen, a world-renowned endocrinologist.
Following Sapolsky's initial year-and-a-half field study in Africa, he returned every summer for another twenty-five years to observe the same group of baboons, from the late 70s to the early 90s. He spent 8 to 10 hours a day for approximately four months each year recording the behaviors of these primates.
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