Psychologist, best known for her work in pioneering the field of evolutionary psychology. She has a BA in biology of Radcliffe College/Harvard University (1979) and her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology (1985). Cosmides did postdoctoral work with Roger Shepard at Stanford and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She won the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research (1988), the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award (1993) for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology, and a J. S. Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. With her husband John Tooby, she published The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Leda Cosmides is currently Professor of Psychology at UCSB. She and John Tooby founded and co-direct the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology.