Richard Byrne

Biography

He went to the University of Cambridge to study Natural Sciences, intending to specialize in physics. Taking psychology as a minor subject, He found it fascinating (and easier!), and ended up with that as my main topic and Donald Broadbent as my project supervisor. He went on to do a PhD under John Morton's supervision at the MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge, on the topic of the use of memory in everyday planning. From there, He came straight to St Andrews and have stayed ever since: instead of moving universities, He moved topics, first to primate behavioural ecology, later to cognitive evolution, including shared abilities with our closest relatives (great apes) and convergent capacities of distantly related species (pigs, elephants).

Research Interest

Evolution of cognitive and social behaviour