David C. Geary, PhD
David C. Geary is a cognitive scientist and evolutionary psychologist with interests in mathematical cognition and learning as well as the biological bases of sex differences. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of California at Riverside, he held faculty positions at the University of Texas at El Paso and the University of Missouri, first at the Rolla campus and then in Columbia. Dr. Geary is currently a Curators’ Distinguished Professor and a Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program.
Dr. Geary has written five sole-authored books; Children’s mathematical development (1994), Male, female: The evolution of human sex differences (1998, second edition, 2010, third edition 2021), The origin of mind: Evolution of brain, cognition, and general intelligence (2005), Evolution of vulnerability: Implications for sex differences in health and development (2015), and The evolved mind and modern education (2024), as well as one co-authored book, Sex differences: Summarizing more than a century of scientific research (Ellis et al., 2008). Several of these books have been translated or are in the process of being translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Arabic.
In addition, he has published more than 360 articles and chapters across a wide range of topics, including cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary psychology, education, biology, and medicine. He co-edited a five-volume book series, Mathematical Cognition and Learning, with Drs. Dan Berch and Kathy Mann Koepke. These volumes include Evolutionary origins and early development of basic number processing (2015); Development of mathematical cognition: Neural substrates and genetic influences (2016); Acquiring complex arithmetic skills and higher-order mathematical concepts (2017), Language and culture in mathematical cognition (2018), and Cognitive foundations for improving mathematical learning (2019). Drs. Geary and Berch also co-edited Evolutionary perspectives on child development and education (2016).
Dr. Geary has given invited addresses in a variety of departments (anthropology, biology, behavior genetics, computer science, education, government, mathematics, neuroscience, physics, and psychology) and Universities throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Europe and East Asia. He is the lead investigator on the MU Math Study, which is focused on mathematical development from the preschool years through high school and supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Among many distinctions is the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (1996), a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health, co-recipient of the 2009 George A. Miller Award, American Psychological Association, and recipient of the G. Stanley Hall Award for lifetime scientific contributions to developmental psychology (American Psychological Association, division 7). He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was the 2014 Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and has been a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University.