The rockefeller university

Stanislas Dehaene

Throughout his career as a scientist and author, Stanislas Dehaene has demystified the inner workings of the mind. His writing has introduced readers to the brain’s intricate architecture, with its specialized neuronal locations and structures primed to react to language, numbers, subliminal messages, and more.

For his imaginative ability to turn complex and enthralling scientific research into beautifully crafted prose, Dehaene will be presented with the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science at The Rockefeller University on March 17. The prize, named after noted physician-scientist and essayist Lewis Thomas, honors scientists as inspirational authors.

“Stan Dehaene convincingly argues that surprise is the driving force of learning: No surprise, no learning,” says Jesse H. Ausubel, chair of the selection committee. “His books abound with surprises—how babies calculate, how brains behave at the movies, how synapses are the mushrooms of learning—and exemplify how great teachers write.”

In his book How We Learn, Dehaene chronicles his experiments to show how the brain uses reasoning, abstract concepts, and systematic rules to model the world, and how education and neuronal recycling reinvent that process. He details the interplay of nature and nurture in constructing the human brain and offers science-based principles to demonstrate how a child’s cognitive development is transformed through learning.

In his most recent book, Seeing the Mind, Dehaene takes the reader into the visual realm. He pairs one-page essays that narrate how neuroscience has evolved across time with striking images of the brain, such as multicolored branches of cortical neurons and layered brain silhouettes.

Dehaene grew up in Roubaix, France and earned his graduate degree in cognitive neuroscience from l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. In 1989, he became a research scientist at France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research, advancing to director of research in 1997. Today, he holds the inaugural Chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France in Paris and is director of NeuroSpin, France’s advanced brain-imaging research center.

Dehaene’s research in neuroscience has involved imaging how cognitive and brain organization differs in adults and children from diverse backgrounds—looking, for example, at the neural activity of blind individuals, mathematicians, adults who never learned to read, or two-month-old infants exposed to spoken sentences. His work illustrates the human brain’s adaptability, as well as its neural pre-programming, present at birth, which is specialized to represent numbers and acquire language. Dehaene has earned many accolades, including the French National Order of Merit, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, and the Brain Prize. He also has been inducted into numerous international scientific societies, including the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society.

Recent recipients of the Lewis Thomas Prize include theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, forestry researcher Suzanne Simard, social psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt, physician Siddhartha Mukherjee, and astrophysicist Kip Thorne.

Register here for the 2025 Lewis Thomas Prize presentation and discussion.