Trained in general and internal medicine, psychiatry and clinical research, Stuart Brown first recognized the importance of play by discovering its absence in the life stories of murderers and felony drunken drivers. His years of clinical practice and thousands of detailed clinical reviews affirmed the importance and need for healthy play throughout the human life cycle, and his later evaluation of highly creative individuals revealed the centrality of playfulness to their success and well-being. His recent years of independent scholarship and exploration of the evolution of human and animal play have helped to focus a central commitment bringing the promises and stories of play into general cultural consciousness and to the establishment of the National Institute For Play. His popular book, PLAY, How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul (2009) has been translated into seven languages.
