Simon LeVay (born 28 August 1943 in Oxford, England) is a British-American neuroscientist. He received a bachelor's degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1966, a Ph.D. in Neuroanatomy at the University of Göttingen in Germany, and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School in 1974. LeVay held positions in neurobiology at the Harvard Medical School from 1974 to 1984. He then worked at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies from 1984 to 1993 while holding an Associate Professorship in Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Much of his early work focused on the visual cortex in animals. While working at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, LeVay published an article in Science that compared the size of the "Interstitial Nucleus of the Anterior Hypothalamus" (INAH3) in a group of gay men to a group of straight men and women. This was the first scientific study ever published that showed brain differences based on sexual orientation. The study results were featured on PBS, Newsweek, Nightline, Donahue, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 1992, he took a leave of absence from Salk to help form the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education (IGLE) in West Hollywood with Chris Patrouch and Lauren Jardine. He never returned. LeVay has spoken extensively on the topic of human sexuality at a number of venues and published a number of books. In 2003 he became a lecturer in Human Sexuality Studies at Stanford University.
Personal life Simon LeVay was born on 28 August 1943 in Oxford, England. LeVay spent most of his childhood in West Dulwich where he attended Dulwich Preparatory School. LeVay went on to attend Dulwich College where he specialized in Latin, Greek, and Ancient History while excelling in cycling. It was at Dulwich College where LeVay also admitted to himself that he was gay.
Education Before moving on to higher education, LeVay spent a gap year in Göttingen Germany where he worked as a technician in an electron microscope lab, learned German, and published a scientific article on the spinal cord of chickens. When the gap year was complete, LeVay returned to England, where he was admitted into Cambridge University. After graduating with a B.A. in natural sciences, he continued the clinical portion of his medical education at the University College Hospital in London before dropping out of medical school altogether. LeVay returned to the lab in Göttingen and enrolled in graduate school, where he published his doctoral thesis on the visual system before graduating with a Ph.D. in neuroanatomy in 1971. At the University of Göttingen, LeVay met an American exchange student from the University of California, Berkeley named Richard Hersey and fell in love. When Hersey left Germany and returned to the United States, LeVay followed him and began looking at postdoctoral positions in Boston, New York, and Wisconsin. He eventually got a job at Harvard Medical School working in the lab of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel. LeVay and Hersey spent a year traveling in the United States before Hersey returned to Berkeley, and LeVay started his life in Boston.
Career LeVay completed his postdoc at Harvard Medical School and began teaching in the Neurobiology Department. In 1984, LeVay accepted a job at the Salk Institute in San Diego, California where he studied the brain's role in vision. He also began working as an Associate Professor in Biology at the University of California. LeVay took a leave of absence to take care of Hersey, who had contracted AIDS. After Hersey died of the disease in 1990, LeVay returned to Salk with little interest in continuing his work on the visual centers of the brain. "Richard and I had spent 21 years together," LeVay said during an interview with a reporter from Discover magazine. "It was while looking after him that I decided I wanted to do something different with my life ... I had an emotional need to do something more personal, something connected with my gay identity." In 1991, LeVay published an article in Science that compared a structure in the hypothalamus called INAH3 in the brains of male homosexuals to that found in a group of heterosexual men and heterosexual women. He found that this region of the brain in gay men was similar to that found in straight women. In 1992, LeVay took a second leave of absence from Salk to help form the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education (IGLE) in West Hollywood with Chris Patrouch and Lauren Jardine. He never returned. After IGLE folded, LeVay would go on to speak on the topic of human sexuality at a number of venues and published books. In 2003 he became a lecturer in Human Sexuality Studies at Stanford University.
INAH3 research
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