Patricia Smith Churchland was born on 16 July 1943 in Oliver, British Columbia. Known for her contributions to the philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of the mind, and neuroethics, she focuses on the association of morality and the social brain. Assistant Professor at the University of Manitoba in 1969, she eventually became Associate Professor and Full Professor. In 1983, she spent one year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and then was appointed Professor of Philosophy at UC San Diego. In 1999, she was made President’s Professor of Philosophy, achieving emerita status in 2013.
Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute since 1989, she has been awarded the MacArthur Prize, the Rossie Prize for Neuroscience, and the Prose Prize for Science. Board Member of the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies, she was made Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015. Notable publications include, Neurophilosophy (1986), The Computational Brain (1992), Brain-Wise (2002), Touching a Nerve (2013), and Conscience (2019). She also published On the Contrary: Critical Essays 1987–1997 (1998) with her husband, Paul M. Churchland.
