CHES Associate Member

Helen Fisher died, peacefully at home, on August 17th, 2024. The cause was endometrial cancer. Despite growing weak in her final weeks in hospice care, she completed her manuscript for a book about her personality research, Thinking Four Ways: How to Connect With Anyone Using Neuroscience, and submitted it five days before her death. It will be published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf and in more than a dozen foreign editions.

The New York Times published an obituary on August 22, 2024.

Obituaries have been published in The Economist, The Times of London, and The Telegraph, and her career was featured in The Economist's podcast, The Intelligence, on August 30th.

Tributes to her life and work have been published by the Kinsey Institute and at Nautilus and YourTango.

The Kinsey Institute, where Helen served as Senior Research Fellow for many years, will be honoring her legacy by establishing the Helen Fisher Distinguished Lecture. Kinsey is accepting donations for this endowed fund, which will support a lecture at least every two years and recognize writers and researchers continuing the work pioneered by Helen in the science of love, sex, and relationships. The first lecture will take place in New York City.

Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, is a Visiting Research Professor and member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. She is currently working on a book to be published by Henry Holt on mate choice. The book stems from her current work as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet site, Chemistry.com, where she has collecting data on some 500,000 individuals. Her most recent book was Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love (Henry Holt 2004; paperback 2005). It discussed her research project with colleagues in which she used fMRI brain scanning to investigate the brain circuitry of romantic love.

Her other books include:

• The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They are Changing the World (Random House 1999; Ballantine 2000)
• Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Mating, Marriage and Why We Stray (W.W. Norton in 1992; Fawcett 1994)
• The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior (William Morrow in l982; Quill l983)

Dr. Fisher has been on the national and international lecture circuit since l983 discussing the evolution of human sexuality, romantic love, marriage and divorce, gender differences, and the future of men and women in business and family life. During 1994-95 she lectured on college campuses as a Visiting Scholar of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Her publications include articles in Journal of Comparative Neurology, Journal of Neurophysiology, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Human Nature, The New York Times Book Review, Scientific American, New Scientist, and books published by Smithsonian Press, Columbia University Press, Cambridge University Press, Rutgers University Press, MIT press and Yale University Press Since l983 Dr. Fisher has served as an anthropological commentator and/or consultant for businesses and the media. Her contracts include those with NBC's Today Show, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the BBC. She had a daily radio spot on The Good Life network, Sirius Radio, in 2007; she was also host of a four-part radio series for the BBC World Service, 2004, a four-part TV series for Turner Broadcasting Systems, 1995, and commentator on a 10-part series for The Today Show (NBC), 1984-85. For her work in communicating anthropology to the lay public, Helen received the American Anthropological Association's "Distinguished Service Award."