Marc Hauser

Marc Hauser is a professor of psychology and organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University. He also co-directs Harvard's Mind, Brain & Behavior Program and serves as director of the Cognitive Evolution Laboratory. He teaches courses on evolution and human nature, the evolution of communication, the biology of morality, and evolutionary ethics. Through his research on social cooperation, neuroscience, and primate behavior, Hauser believes that evolution hardwired human beings to know right from wrong. In his most recent book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (2006), he argues that millions of years of natural selection have molded a universal moral grammar within our brains that enables us to make rapid decisions about ethical dilemmas.

Hauser has authored hundreds of articles in scientific journals and has authored or co-authored numerous books including The Evolution of Communication (1996); Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (2001); and From Monkey Brain to Human Brain (2005). A forthcoming book entitled The Minimalist Mind, co-authored with Noam Chomsky, is in preparation.

The recipient of a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1993, Marc Hauser was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. He has twice been awarded the Harvard University Teaching Innovation Award, and has been voted the University's most popular professor on two occasions.