|
|
|
Laura Betzig studies despotism and democracy in
history. She's looked at the cross cultural
record; done fieldwork on Ifaluk Atoll in the
Caroline Islands; and read ancient, medieval and
modern history. She's written over a hundred
scientific and scholarly articles on subjects from
sex in the Old Testament, to competition among
Roman emperors and Pan troglodytes, to
the persecution of Christians, to causes of the
English Revolution. And she's published 3 books: Despotism
and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View
of History; Human Reproductive Behavior: A
Darwinian Perspective; and Human
Nature: A Critical Reader. She's spent the
last couple of decades at work on The Badge of
Lost Innocence, a history of the West.
Betzig has a B.A. from the University of Michigan
in psychology, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from
Northwestern University, where she studied under
Napoleon Chagnon. She's held research and teaching
positions at Northwestern, the University of
California and the University of Michigan in
anthropology, psychology and zoology, and has
lectured in departments of anthropology, biology,
economics, philosophy, psychology and medieval
history. She's done TV in the US and Canada, the
Netherlands and the UK; and her work has been
written up in newspapers and magazines like Time,
The Sunday Times, The
Economist, The Washington Post, The
Atlantic, Politico, Slate, Discover,
Smithsonian, New Scientist, The
Huffington Post and US
News & World Report. She's contributed
to the Annual Question at Edge,
and blogs on "The Political Animal: Human History
as Natural History" for Psychology
Today.
Laura's daughter Alexa, MIT '07, Harvard '11,
assesses targeted cancer therapies for a biotech
in Cambridge; her son Max, Carnegie Mellon '11,
Chicago Booth '22, led his soccer team to
consecutive NCAA tournament berths, and now works
in a Chicago bank. Many of their ancestors were
self-made. Laura's father, the son of a Queens cab
driver, founded a company at 60; her brother, who
invents microscopes, won a Nobel Prize for
Chemistry in 2014. Laura and her husband of
35 years, the pediatrician Paul Turke, live
together near Ann Arbor on Strawberry Lake.
Contact:
lbetzig@gmail.com
|
|