John Coates is a neuroscientist and applied physiologist working on the biology of risk taking.
Before that he was a trader on Wall Street, working for Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and running a desk at Deutsche Bank.
Coates then retrained in physiology and neuroscience and began researching the biology of risk taking and stress.
Monitoring in real time the cardiovascular and endocrine systems of traders, he found that the state of their physiology (rather than their psychology) is the single largest predictor of their risk taking and performance.
[1] In 2012, Coates published the best-selling book The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: how risk-taking transforms us, body and mind.