Levitin Daniel

Daniel J. Levitin is an American-Canadian cognitive neuroscientist and author. He writes nonfiction on music, the brain and critical thinking. He is best known for This Is Your Brain on Music (2006), which spent more than twelve months on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold over 1.5 million copies. His six books have collectively sold more than three million copies worldwide.

Daniel Levitin was born on 27 December 1957 in San Francisco, California, the son of a businessman and a novelist. He grew up in Daly City, Moraga and Palos Verdes. He left Palos Verdes High School after his junior year to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied applied mathematics. He later enrolled at Berklee College of Music before leaving to work as a record producer and helped found 415 Records in San Francisco.

He returned to education in his thirties, earning a BA from Stanford University in 1992 and an MSc and PhD from the University of Oregon in 1993 and 1996. He completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University Medical School and the University of California, Berkeley.

Levitin is James McGill Professor Emeritus of psychology, behavioural neuroscience and music at McGill University in Montreal. He is also Founding Dean of Arts and Humanities at Minerva University and a Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Psychological Science.

His debut book, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (Dutton/Penguin, 2006), was a New York Times and Globe and Mail bestseller for over twelve months. It was named one of the best books of the year by The Guardian, The Independent and The Globe and Mail, and was translated into twenty languages.

The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (Dutton/Penguin, 2008) debuted on the New York Times and Canadian bestseller lists. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload (Dutton/Penguin Random House, 2014) debuted at number two on the New York Times bestseller list and reached number one in Canada.

A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (Dutton/Penguin Random House, 2016), is his most decorated book. It won the National Business Book Award, the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, and the Axiom Business Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Donner Prize.

Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives (Dutton/Penguin Random House, 2020), debuted at number ten on the New York Times bestseller list and number two in Canada. Published in the United Kingdom as The Changing Mind, it entered the Sunday Times bestseller list at number five and was named one of the best books of 2020 by the same publication.

His sixth book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine (W. W. Norton, 2024) received advance praise from Paul McCartney, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bob Weir.

Daniel Levitin has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He appears regularly on NPR and CBC, and has co-hosted documentary films for PBS and National Geographic with Bobby McFerrin and Sting.

Photo credit: Bluesky @jacobsilverman