Vita
Biographical Sketch [PDF] and Curriculum Vitae [PDF]Personal Information
Born: July 11, 1946
Nationality: U.S.
Married to Daniel B. Hrdy, M.D., Ph.D., three children, born 1977; 1982; 1986.
sarahhrdy@citrona.com
Institutional Affiliation
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Professor Emerita
Department of Anthropology
University of California
Phone: (530) 752-0745 (department)
Davis, CA 95616
Biographical Sketch
Sarah Hrdy graduated summa cum laude from Radcliffe College (1969) and earned her doctorate in Anthropology from Harvard (1975). She is currently professor emerita at the University of California-Davis. A former Guggenheim fellow, she has been elected to the California Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the author of five books including The Black-man of Zinacantan: A Central American Legend (1972); The Langurs of Abu: Female and Male Strategies of Reproduction (1977) the first book to examine the reproductive strategies of nonhuman primates from the perspective of both sexes; The Woman that Never Evolved (1981, new edition 1999), about the extent to which female primates are active strategists, competitive and sexually assertive, a book selected by the New York Times as one of the Notable Books of the Year; and Mother Nature: A History of mothers, infants and natural selection (1999), which won the Howells Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Biological Anthropology and was chosen by both Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal as one of the “Best Books of 1999”, and Mothers and Others: The evolutionary origins of Mutual understanding (Belknap Press of Harvard, spring 2009). She is also the co-editor of Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives, selected by Choice as one of the “Outstanding Academic Books” for 1984, and co-editor with Sue Carter and others of Attachment and Bonding: A new Synthesis (2005). For many years she edited the Foundations of Human Behavior series and continues to serve on editorial boards for Evolutionary Anthropology and Human Nature. She lives with her husband Dan, a retired medical doctor and walnut grower on their farm in northern California where they are involved in sustainable agriculture and habitat restoration.