Discovering Human Sexuality (6th Edition) – eBook

About The Author

Janice Baldwin

Dr. Janice Baldwin is a Senior Lecturer and sociologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has co-authored numerous articles focusing on play, creativity, sexuality, and sex education. Together with her husband John Baldwin, she teaches an undergraduate course on human sexuality, which consistently receives accolades as the best course at UCSB.

John Baldwin

Dr. John Baldwin is a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has coauthored numerous articles on creativity, sexuality, play, and sex education. His areas of specialization include G. H. Mead's theories, human sexuality, socialization, capitalism, and the synthesis of micro and macro sociological perspectives. He earned his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

Simon LeVay

Dr. Simon LeVay is a British-American neuroscientist born in Oxford, England, on August 28, 1943. He earned his bachelor's degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1966 and obtained a Ph.D. in Neuroanatomy from the University of Göttingen in Germany. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School in 1974.

LeVay held positions in neurobiology at the Harvard Medical School. Following this, he worked at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies while holding an Associate Professorship in Biology at the University of California, San Diego. Much of his early work focused on the visual cortex in animals.

During his time at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, LeVay conducted a study that compared the size of the "Interstitial Nucleus of the Anterior Hypothalamus" (INAH3) in a group of gay men to a group of straight men and women. This was the first scientific study demonstrating brain differences based on sexual orientation. The study results received widespread attention and were featured in various media outlets such as PBS, Newsweek, Nightline, Donahue, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

LeVay has spoken extensively on the topic of human sexuality at various venues and has authored several books. In 2003, he became a lecturer in Human Sexuality Studies at Stanford University.