Daniel Lieberman, Ph.D.

Daniel Lieberman, Ph.D. is the Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He received degrees from Harvard and Cambridge University, and taught at Rutgers University and George Washington University before joining the Harvard Faculty in 2001. He studies and teaches how and why the human body is the way it is, and how our evolutionary history affects health and disease. He is best known for his research on the evolution of the head and on the evolution of running and walking, which he studies by combining experimental biomechanics, anatomy, and physiology both in the lab and in the field, mostly Africa but also Mexico. He loves teaching and has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, many in journals such as Nature, Science, and PNAS, as well as three popular books: Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding (2021), The Evolution of the Human Head (2011), The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease (2013). In his spare time, he enjoys running.