Editing Rupert Sheldrake (section)

==Early life and education==
Sheldrake was born on 28 June 1942,<ref name="Arguing Science 2016, p. 1">{{Cite book |last1=Sheldrake |first1=Rupert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LWtODQAAQBAJ&pg=PT7 |title=Arguing Science: A Dialogue on the Future of Science and Spirit |last2=Shermer |first2=Michael |publisher=Monkfish Book Publishing |year=2016 |pages=|isbn=9781939681584 }}</ref> in [[Newark-on-Trent]], Nottinghamshire,<ref name=bio-anglican/> to Reginald Sheldrake and Doris (née Tebbutt).<ref>Contemporary Authors, vol. 127, Susan M. Trosky, Gale Research International Ltd, 1989, p. 398</ref> His father was a [[University of Nottingham]]-educated pharmacist who ran a chemist's shop on the same road as his parents' wallpaper shop.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.inspirepicturearchive.org.uk/image/9690/Reginald_Sheldrake_Upon_his_Graduation_Newark_c_1924 |title=Reginald Sheldrake Upon his Graduation, Newark, c 1924 |access-date= 12 July 2021}}</ref> Sheldrake credits his father (an amateur naturalist and microscopist)<ref name="Arguing Science 2016, p. 1"/> with supporting his interests in zoology and botany.<ref name=bio2/><ref>Sheldrake, Rupert, [http://www.theecologist.org/magazine/features/2111379/family_orchards.html ''Family Orchards''], ''[[The Ecologist]]'', 9 October 2013. Retrieved 1 November 2013.</ref>

Although his parents were [[Methodist Church of Great Britain|Methodists]],<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Leviton |first=Mark |date=February 2013 |title=Wrong Turn |url=https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/446/wrong-turn |access-date=2022-11-29 |website=[[The Sun Magazine]] |language=en}}</ref> they sent him to [[Worksop College]], an [[Church of England|Anglican]] [[boarding school]].<ref name=bio-anglican/> Sheldrake has said:

<blockquote>I went through the standard scientific atheist phase when I was about 14 ... I bought into that package deal of science equals atheism. I was the only boy at my [[high Anglican]] boarding school who refused to get confirmed.<ref name=TimAdams/></blockquote>

In the nine-month period before starting college, Sheldrake worked at the [[Parke-Davis]] pharmacology research lab in London, an experience he described as formative due to the required destruction of lab animals, which he found deeply unsettling.<ref name=":1" /> At [[Clare College, Cambridge]], Sheldrake studied biology and biochemistry. In 1964,<ref name=":1" /> he was awarded a fellowship to study the philosophy and history of science at [[Harvard University]].<ref>{{Cite web |last= |date=2013 |title=Interview with Scientist Rupert Sheldrake |url=https://tricycle.org/magazine/rupert-sheldrake/ |access-date=2022-11-20 |website=[[Tricycle: The Buddhist Review]] |language=en}}</ref> After a year at Harvard, he returned to Cambridge, where he earned a PhD in biochemistry in 1968 for his work in plant development and [[phytohormones|plant hormones]].<ref name=phd>{{cite Q|Q124658951}}</ref><ref name=TimAdams/><ref name=bio2/>