Melvin Konner, MD, PhD

Melvin Konner, M.D., Ph.D. is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and an associate professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at Emory University. He studied at Brooklyn College, CUNY, earned a Ph.D. in biological anthropology at Harvard University, and did postdoctoral work at the Laboratory of Neuroendocrine Regulation, MIT. He has an M.D. but does not practice medicine.

Dr. Konner spent a total of two years doing fieldwork among the Kalahari San or Bushmen, studying infant development and the hormonal mechanism of lactational infertility. After six years on the Harvard faculty, he attended Harvard Medical School and subsequently moved to Emory as department chair. He has held NIMH and NSF research grants, and been a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry. More recently, he has spent time advocating single-payer health reform, and has testified twice at U.S. Senate hearings. Dr. Konner1s book, The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit, was nominated for the American Book Award (Science).