Simon LeVay

Simon LeVay is a British-born neuroscientist turned writer. He is best known for a 1991 study, published in Science, which reported on a difference in brain structure between gay and straight men. He has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the Salk Institute in San Diego, but he now lives in Los Angeles. Among his 12 published books are several on sex, including a college textbook titled Human Sexuality (now in its fourth edition), and Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation. His most recent book is a historical novel, The Donation of Constantine. Once a fanatical bicycle racer, LeVay continues to ride his bicycle, though at a more sober pace. He is intolerant of creationists, lactose, and staying indoors.

LeVay writes: "In the early 1960s, as a teenager, I was arrested and jailed briefly, along with the renowned 90-year-old philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell. (The occasion was an anti-war demonstration.) This lead to my reading Russell's History of Western Philosophy. Only one paragraph in that long book stuck in my memory: it dealt with the mysterious 8th-century forgery known as the Donation of Constantine. Intrigue, papal politics, winter journeys, bloody battles -- maybe even a hint of bodice-ripping! What a great topic for a novel, I thought. Fifty years later, I wrote it."