Dick Swaab is a physician and Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam (AMC). He studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam, where he obtained his PhD in 1970 while still a student. From 1978 to 2005, he was Director of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and founded and directed the Netherlands Brain Bank until 2005.
Team Leader at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
Dick is currently a team leader at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience within the research group ‘Neuropsychiatric Disorders’. He is also Qiu Shi (= In Search of Truth) Professor at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and Visiting Professor at three other universities in China. He has published more than 590 scientific SCI-indexed articles and 200 book chapters, edited 80 books and supervised 85 PhD candidates, 20 of whom have since become professors.
Published Books
He published the two-volume monograph The Human Hypothalamus, as part of the Handbook of Clinical Neurologyseries by Elsevier, Amsterdam, as well as the bestseller ‘Wij zijn ons Brein”, which has now been translated into 16 languages and has sold more than 450,000 copies. In his bestseller, Dick argues that our choices and preferences are determined by our brains, from the womb through to Alzheimer’s disease. One of his conclusions is therefore that sexual orientation is not a choice, but a matter of biological predisposition. The professor has received considerable criticism from the fields of philosophy and psychology, while being widely recognized as a leading researcher within the neurosciences.
Other Published Books
A children’s version of this book, "Jij bent je brein", was published in 2013 and has been translated into Russian and Vietnamese. On 21 September 2016, his new book for a general audience, "Ons Creatieve Brein, was published. Swaab’s H-factor is 100.
Dick as a Speaker and Moderator
In addition to his interest in the brain, Dick is also passionate about topics such as psychiatry, consciousness and spirituality. With his extensive experience, Dick is a sought-after speaker and moderator at conferences, seminars and other events.
