Imagine (Lehrer) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1981
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.S., Columbia University; Oxford
   University as a Rhodes Scholar
• Currently—N/A


Jonah Lehrer is an American author and journalist who writes on the topics of psychology, neuroscience, and the relationship between science and the humanities. Simon Ings has written, "Lehrer fancies himself—and not without reason—as a sort of one-man third culture, healing the rift between sciences and humanities by communicating and contrasting their values in a way that renders them comprehensible to partisans of either camp.

Lehrer graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a major in neuroscience; while an undergraduate, he examined the biological process of memory in Professor Eric Kandel's Lab. He was also editor of the Columbia Review for two years. He then studied 20th century literature and philosophy at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

He is a contributing editor at Wired, Scientific American Mind, National Public Radio's Radiolab, and has written for the New Yorker, Nature, Seed, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Globe. Jonah Lehrer is also featured in brief informational sessions on the television show Brink, on the science channel. He currently writes the "Head Case" column for the Wall Street Journal.

Jonah Lehrer is the author of three books: Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007), How We Decide (2010), and Imagine: How Creativity Works (2012).

Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Lehrer's debut book, is a collection of biographical essays on creative figures such as Paul Cezanne, Walt Whitman, Auguste Escoffier, and Marcel Proust. Lehrer argues for an intimate relationship with science and the humanities, and he holds that many discoveries of neuroscience are actually rediscoveries of insights made much earlier by various artists.

In How We Decide, Lehrer argues there are two main parts of the brain involved in decision-making, the rational and the emotional. His thesis has been called into question based on current understanding of neuroscience. (From Wikipedia.)