John Coates

John Coates is a senior research fellow in neuroscience and finance at the University of Cambridge. After completing his Ph.D., Coates traded derivatives for Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, and then ran a trading desk for Deutsche Bank in New York. He observed first-hand the powerful emotions driving traders. He returned to Cambridge in 2004 to research the effects of the endocrine system on financial risk taking. Coates’s findings are regularly cited in leading publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Wired, and The Economist, and he has appeared on Good Morning America, CBS’s Evening News, and the BBC. His writing has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The Financial Times, among others.

In 2012, John’s book, The Hour between Dog and Wolf, was short-listed for the Financial Times – Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award, and for the UK’s Wellcome Trust Science Book Prize. It is the only book to be short-listed for both the business and science prizes. The book was also chosen book-of-the-month by the British Army; and John Coates was named by the journal Foreign Policy as one of the most influential thinkers of 2012.