Steven Rose | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Steven Peter Russell Rose (1938-07-04)4 July 1938 London, England |
| Died | 9 July 2025(2025-07-09) (aged 87) |
| Education | King's College, Cambridge Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience |
| Known for | Criticism ofgenetic determinism |
| Spouse | [1] |
| Children | Simon and Ben[1] |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neuroscience |
| Institutions | The Open University Gresham College, London |
| Thesis | Biochemical consequence of L-DOPA administration to animals: implications for the treatment of Parkinson's disease (1961) |
Steven Peter Russell Rose (4 July 1938 – 9 July 2025) was an English neuroscientist, author and social commentator. He was an emeritus professor of biology andneurobiology at theOpen University andGresham College, London.
Born in London, England on 4 July 1938,[2] he was brought up as anOrthodox Jew. Rose said that he decided to become anatheist when he was eight years old.[3] He went to a direct grant school in northwest London which operated anumerus clausus restricting the numbers of Jewish students. He studiedbiochemistry atKing's College, Cambridge, and neurochemistry at theInstitute of Psychiatry,King's College London.[4]
Following a Fellowship atNew College, Oxford, and aMedical Research Council research post, he was appointed to the professorship of biology at the newly instituted Open University in 1969. At the time he was Britain's youngest full professor and chair of the department. At the Open University he established the Brain Research Group, within which he and his colleagues investigated the biological processes involved inmemory formation and treatments forAlzheimer's disease on which he published some 300 research papers and reviews. He wrote severalpopular science books and regularly wrote forThe Guardian newspaper and theLondon Review of Books. From 1999 to 2002, he gave public lectures as a Professor of Physick (Genetics and Society) with his wife, the feminist sociologistHilary Rose atGresham College, London. His work won him numerous medals and prizes including theBiochemical Society medal for communication in science and the prestigiousEdinburgh Medal in 2004. His bookThe Making of Memory won theRhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize in 1993.[5]In 2012 theBritish Neuroscience Association gave him a lifetime award for "Outstanding contributions to neuroscience."[citation needed]
Together with Hilary Rose he was a founder member of theBritish Society for Social Responsibility in Science in the 1960s, and more recently they have been instrumental incalling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions for as long as Israel continues itsoccupation of the Palestinian Territories, on the grounds of Israeli academics' close relationship with theIDF. An open letter[6] initiated by Steven and Hilary Rose, and also signed by 123 other academics was published inThe Guardian on 6 April 2002.[7] In 2004 Hilary Rose and he were the founding members of theBritish Committee for the Universities of Palestine.[5][8]
Rose was for several years a regular panellist onBBC Radio 4's ethics debating seriesThe Moral Maze.[4] He was a Distinguished Supporter ofHumanists UK. He was part of theRoyal Society's working group producing their Brain Waves modules on the state of neuroscience and its social framing, and was a member of theNuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party onNovel Neurotechnologies.[9] His recent books with Hilary Rose includeAlas Poor Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology, in 2012,Genes, Cells and Brains: the Promethean promises of the new biology (Verso), described byGuardian reviewerSteven Poole as "fascinating, lucid and angry" with a "lethally impressive hit ratio", and most recentlyCan Neuroscience Change Our Minds? (Polity, 2016). His audio-autobiography forms part of theBritish Library's National Life Stories Collection of distinguished scientists. The sociologistNikolas Rose is his younger brother. Hilary and he had two sons. He remained an atheist.[10]
WithRichard Lewontin andLeon Kamin, Rose championed the "radical science movement".[11][12] The three criticizedsociobiology,evolutionary psychology, andadaptationism, most prominently in the bookNot in Our Genes (1984), laying out their opposition toSociobiology (E. O. Wilson, 1975),The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins, 1976), and other works promoting an evolutionary explanation for human social behaviour.Not in Our Genes described Dawkins as "the most reductionist of sociobiologists". In retort, Dawkins wrote that the book practices astraw man fallacy by distorting argumentsin terms of genetics to "an idiotic travesty (that the properties of a complex whole are simply thesum of those same properties in the parts)", and accused the authors of giving "ideology priority over truth".[13] Rose replied in the second edition of his bookLifelines. Rose wrote further works in this area: in 2000 he jointly edited with the sociologistHilary Rose, a critique of evolutionary psychology entitledAlas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology. In 2006 he wrote a paper dismissing classicalheritability estimates as useful scientific measures in respect of human populations especially in the context ofIQ.[14]
Rose wrote the introduction ofThe Richness of Life (2007) by the prominent American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science,Stephen Jay Gould.
Rose died on 9 July 2025, at the age of 87.[15]
Books (for selected papers see website Stevenroseonline.net)
Did the editors of this series of volumes of the King James realise that I was an ex-Orthodox Jew, an atheist and a biologist to boot when they suggested that I write this introduction?
