Prof. dr. Dick Swaab

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Dick Swaab was Director of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research from 1978 to 2005.

Since 1979 he is Professor of Neurobiology at the Medical Faculty, University of Amsterdam. In 1985 he founded the Netherlands Brain Bank and was Director until 2005. He is since 1978 Leader Research Team Neuropsychiatric Disorders, Neth. Inst for Neuroscience, an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), was appointed Qiu Shi Professor in Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, P.R. China and Invited member of the Academia Europaea.

His major research interests focus on sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation, aging of the brain and Alzheimer’s disease and the neurobiological basis of depression and suicide. He has published over 600 papers in SCI journals, authored more than 200 chapters in books, and edited more than 120 books. Swaab mentored 88 PhD students from which 21 are now full professors. He is author of the 2-volume monograph The Human Hypothalamus that appeared in the Handbook of Clinical Neurology series, Elsevier and of the Dutch best seller We are our

Brains, that sold more than 500.000 and that is translated in 18 languages. This book has been more than 2 years in the Dutch bestseller list, 7 weeks even as #1. There is also a children’s version of the book (You are your brain). In 2016 Swaab published a second book for the general public Our Creative Brain, that also came from the first week in the bestseller list. Swaab’s H-factor (D-index) is 132.