Dr. Lee Gettler is the John A. O’Brien College Professor of Anthropology at Notre Dame, where he is the Department Chairperson and the director of the Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Laboratory. He is a leading expert on the ‘biology of fatherhood’ and what it means for how we think about men’s roles in families and men’s health.

His research explores how men’s bodies respond to the transition to fatherhood through shifts in hormones like testosterone and oxytocin. He focuses on how these biological changes help men get ready to take on roles in their families as committed caregivers and supportive partners. He draws on this work to help frame new questions about the roles of human fathers in the evolutionary past. His ground-breaking research in this area has been published in The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science and featured on the front page of the New York Times. In 2025, he was named an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). With many fantastic collaborators around the world, he studies questions about the role of fathers in families, parents’ health, and child well-being across a range of global settings, including the Philippines, Congo-Brazzaville, and the U.S.

He is the father to two amazing children, who keep him very busy with their passions for basketball, soccer, running, and music.