21 Facts About Simon LeVay

Simon LeVay received a bachelor's degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1966, a Ph.

Simon LeVay 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.

Simon LeVay was born on 28 August 1943 in Oxford, England.

Simon LeVay spent most of his childhood in West Dulwich where he attended Dulwich Preparatory School.

Simon LeVay went on to attend Dulwich College where he specialized in Latin, Greek, and Ancient History while excelling in cycling.

Simon LeVay returned to the lab in Gottingen and enrolled in graduate school, where he published his doctoral thesis on the visual system before graduating with a Ph.

At the University of Gottingen, Simon 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, Simon LeVay followed him and began looking at postdoctoral positions in Boston, New York, and Wisconsin.

Simon LeVay eventually got a job at Harvard Medical School working in the lab of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel.

Simon LeVay completed his postdoc at Harvard Medical School and began teaching in the Neurobiology Department.

In 1984, Simon LeVay accepted a job at the Salk Institute in San Diego, California where he studied the brain's role in vision.

Simon LeVay began working as an Associate Professor in Biology at the University of California.

Simon LeVay took a leave of absence to take care of Hersey, who had contracted AIDS.

In 1991, Simon 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.

Simon LeVay found that this region of the brain in gay men was similar to that found in straight women.

In 1992, Simon LeVay took a second leave of absence from Salk to help form the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education in West Hollywood with Chris Patrouch and Lauren Jardine.

Researchers had been comparing the brains of men and women since the 1980s, but the article that caught Simon LeVay's attention was published by a group at UCLA.

Over a period of nine months, Simon LeVay performed surgery on the brains of 41 cadavers: 18 gay men, 16 straight men, and 6 straight women.

In 1991, Simon LeVay published "A difference in hypothalamic structure between heterosexual and homosexual men" in Science.

Simon LeVay liked the idea so much that he took a leave of absence from Salk in 1992 to help.

Patrouch and Simon LeVay had been hoping to get their courses accredited and start offering degrees, but the situation proved untenable and IGLE shut down in 1996.