Biografia
Nicholas Keynes Humphrey (born 27 March 1943) is an English neuropsychologist and writer whose work has focused on the evolution of consciousness and social intelligence. He carried out early research on visual perception after cortical damage in monkeys and collaborated with Lawrence Weiskrantz in research that led to the discovery of blindsight. He moved into ethology and, after doing fieldwork with mountain gorillas, was one of the first to formulate the social intelligence hypothesis. His more recent research, in collaboration especially with Daniel Dennett, has concentrated on the science and philosophy of phenomenal consciousness. His work builds towards a materialist theory of conscious experience in humans and animals, that explains it as a life-affirming illusion. These ideas, popularised in books including A History of the Mind (1992), Seeing Red (2006), Soul Dust (2011) and Sentience (2023), have had considerable impact but remain controversial. Humphrey has held academic posts at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, The New School for Social Research in New York, and the London School of Economics. He has presented television series on the development of the human mind and topics such as nuclear disarmament and belief in the supernatural. == Family and early life == Humphrey was born in London, into what The New Yorker described as "an illustrious family of intellectuals". His father, John H. Humphrey, was a pioneering immunologist and his mother, Janet Humphrey (née Hill), a psychoanalyst who worked with Anna Freud. His paternal grandfather was the inventor H. A. Humphrey, and his great-aunt Edith Humphrey the first British woman to receive a doctorate in chemistry. His maternal grandparents were the Nobel-Prize winning physiologist, A. V. Hill (later, member of parliament for Cambridge University), and the welfare pioneer Margaret Hill, sister of economist John Maynard Keynes. Humphrey described the "family affair" of science in the 2004 book Curious Minds. "I grew up feeling I carried a warrant to explore anything I chose, that I could indeed safely cross into areas "Not for Everybody."" == Education == Humphrey attended a boarding prep school and Westminster School (1956–61) He acted in school plays, including Shakespeare and Euripides (in Greek). He read widely and kept a commonplace book, which he maintained into later life. At Westminster, he and his physics teacher designed an experiment to measure the speed of light using equipment set up along a London street. In his autobiography, Stephen Hawking recalls that in 1958, when he was sixteen and his family went to India for a year, he "stayed with the family of Dr. John Humphrey at their house in Mill Hill. The house had a basement that contained steam engines and other models made by John Humphrey’s father.". Humphrey (two years younger) recalls him as "quizzical" and "somewhat bossy". In 1961 Humphrey went up to Trinity College, Cambridge on a scholarshi
