Simon LeVay

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Simon LeVay (born 28 August 1943 in Oxford, England) is a neuroscientist and author known for his studies about brain structures and sexuality. He is also the author of a textbook on human sexuality and has coauthored books on diverse topics such as earthquakes and volcanoes, extraterrestrial life.

Degrees:

University of Cambridge, England (B.A., Natural Sciences, 1966)
University of Göttingen, Germany (Ph.D., Neuroanatomy, 1971)
Harvard Medical School (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 1972-1974)

LeVay held positions at Harvard from 1974 to 1984, after which he worked at the Salk Institute from 1984-1993. While at the Salk institute he was also Adjunct Associate Professor of Biology at University of California, San Diego.

Much of his early work looked at visual cortex in animals, especially cats.

In 1991 LeVay made news by claiming to have discovered that homosexual and heterosexual men have a difference in size in the third interstitial nuclei of the anterior hypothalamus. Some criticized the work as science by press conference, and critics have pointed out a number of concerns about the methodology, including sample size and measurement methods. Nonetheless, researchers have replicated the tests performed and have confirmed LeVay's findings, most recently in 2001, finding that there was a greater cellular density in gay men and straight women in the nuclei. Byne, W., S. Tobet, et al. (2001). "The interstitial nuclei of the human anterior hypothalamus: an investigation of variation with sex, sexual orientation, and hiv status." Horm Behav 40(2): 86-92. Oregon Health Sciences University has reported analogous findings for sheep. A hypothalamic cell group that may be the sheep equivalent of INAH3 was reported to be larger in rams than ewes, but smaller in homosexual rams than in heterosexual rams. Roselli, C. E., K. Larkin, et al. (2004). "The volume of a sexually dimorphic nucleus in the ovine medial preoptic area/anterior hypothalamus varies with sexual partner preference." Endocrinology.

Selected bibliography

LeVay S (1993). The Sexual Brain. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0262620936.
LeVay S (1996). Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0262621193.
LeVay S, Valente SM (2002. Second ed, 2005) Human Sexuality. Sunderland: Sinauer Associates. ISBN 0716786761.
LeVay S (1991). A difference in hypothalamic structure between homosexual and heterosexual men. Science 253:1034-1037.

External links

[Simon LeVay website]
[Simon LeVay biography], Born Gay ProCon.org

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