Dale Purves is the George B. Geller Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences where he remains Research Professor with additional appointments in the department of Psychology and Brain Sciences and the department of Philosophy at Duke University. After earning a B.A. from Yale, an M.D. from Harvard and additional postdoctoral training at Harvard and University College London, he joined the faculty at Washington University School of Medicine in 1973. In 1990 he became the founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke Medical Center and was subsequently Director of Duke's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. He also served as the Director of the Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore .
Best known for his work on neural development and synaptic plasticity, Purves’ research during the last 20 years has sought to explain visual perception and auditory perception in the context of music. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the author, and co-author or editor of 18 previous books on neuroscience.