Francis Clark Howell

Francis Clark Howell (born November 27, 1925 in Kansas City , † March 10, 2007 in Berkeley ) was an American paleoanthropologist . In the USA Howell was considered to be the most important exponent of an interdisciplinary approach to researching the tribal history of humans in the 20th century.

Career

Howell grew up on a small farm in Kansas and attended a one-class school there until 1937. After devastating dust storms destroyed the economic existence of the family and transformed the region into a " dust bowl ", Howell's father worked as a sales representative , which suffered from further schooling. In World War II, Howell was on duty in the US Navy , after which he learned in the American Museum of Natural History , the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson and Ralph Koenigswald know what compelled him to at the University of Chicago , referring to the GI Bill of Rights Study anthropology . In January 1947 he began his undergraduate studies , later he earned his master’s degree and finally in 1953 - also in Chicago with Sherwood L. Washburn - the doctoral degree in anthropology with a study of the bone structure of the skull base in humans.

Following his doctoral exams F. Clark Howell taught from 1953 to 1955 at the Washington University in St. Louis the subject anatomy . In 1954 he researched in Africa for six months and during this stay made friends with the paleoanthropologists Raymond Dart , Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey .

From 1955 to 1970 he was a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago , with increasing managerial responsibilities , then at the University of California, Berkeley until his retirement in 1991 .

Research topics

At first, Howell was primarily interested in researching European Neanderthals . The view that is still valid today goes back to him that the anatomical peculiarities of the Neanderthal man emerged as an adaptation to the periglacial regions of Europe.

Together with Sherwood L. Washburn, since his first trip to Africa in 1954, he ensured that there was more digging for early pre- humans on this continent . In the obituary of the University of Berkeley it was said that his most important achievement was that he made sure that during excavations today everywhere and a. Geologists , climatologists , ecologists , archaeologists, and evolutionary biologists work with the paleoanthropologists.

In Isimila near Iringa ( Tanzania ) Howell discovered 260,000 year old stone tools from the Acheuléen in 1957/58 , including some unusually large hand axes . 1961 to 1963 he was involved in excavations in Spain, where 300,000 to 400,000 year old stone tools were recovered. However, Phillip Tobias wrote in his obituary in Science that he also discovered the remains of the people who had made such tools during these excavation campaigns.

Organized by him from 1967 to 1973 excavations at the Omo River in Ethiopia , however, brought numerous remains of australopithecines to light. He undertook further excavations in Kenya , Tanzania , Turkey , Spain and China . Even after his retirement, Howell worked - together with Tim White - on the analysis of bone finds from the Ethiopian Awash region.

In 1970, he and John Desmond Clark founded the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies in Berkeley , later renamed the Human Evolution Research Center and jointly headed by him and Tim White. As a trustee of the Leakey Foundation , he ensured for decades that the foundation's scholarships were awarded for anthropological research projects. Without this funding, Jane Goodall's studies on chimpanzees , Birutė Galdikas on orangutans and Dian Fossey on gorillas would not have been possible.

Howell had been diagnosed with cancer a year before he died . He died at home in Berkeley, leaving behind a wife, daughter and son. Six newly described species and one subspecies were named in his honor with the epithet howelli during his lifetime .

Honors

Howell was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the American Philosophical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . He was an honorary member of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland , the French Académie des Sciences and the Royal Society of South Africa .

In 1998 he was awarded the Leakey Prize and in the same year the American Association of Physical Anthropologists received the Charles Robert Darwin Award for his life's work in the field of anthropology. In 1993 he had already received the Franklin L. Burr Award from the National Geographic Society .

Fonts (selection)

• Early Man. Time-Life Books, 1970.
  • German: The man of the past. Time-Life International, Frankfurt am Main 1966; New edition: Time-Life International, Frankfurt am Main 1969
• Hominidae. Chapter 10 in: Vincent J. Maglio and H. Basil S. Cooke (Eds.): Evolution of African Mammals. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA) 1979, pp. 154-248, ISBN 978-0-67427075-6
• The place of Neanderthal man in human evolution. In: American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 9, No. 4, 1951, pp. 379-416, doi: 10.1002 / ajpa.1330090402

literature

• Hansjürgen Müller-Beck: Francis Clark Howell: Paleoanthropologist and prehistoric man, 1925–2007. In: Communications from the Society for Prehistory. Volume 16, 2007, 103–107, full text (PDF), with illus.
• Mary C. Stiner and Steven L. Kuhn: Early Man: a tribute to the late career of F. Clark Howell. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 55, 2008, pp. 758–760, doi: 10.1016 / j.jhevol.2008.05.010 , (PDF)

Web links

• Berkeley University memorial page ( Memento of May 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "F. Clark Howell was the principal architect and prime mover of the multidisciplinary study of human evolution in the past half-century. ”Quoted from Tim White : F. Clark Howell (1925–2007). In: Nature . Volume 447, p. 52, 2007, doi: 10.1038 / 447052a
2. ↑ www.biography.com ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Phillip Tobias : Francis Clark Howell (1925-2007). In: Science . Volume 316, No. 5827, 2007, p. 995, doi: 10.1126 / science.1142771
4. ↑ "He was a pioneer in the organization of multi-disciplinary research teams, bringing together geologists, paleontologists, biologists, archaeologists, and physical anthropologists to investigate the fossil record of human evolution from many perspectives." Www.ncse.com National Center for Science Education: “ F. Clark Howell dies. "(March 13, 2007)
5. ^ F. Clark Howell et al .: Uranium-series Dating of Bone from the Isimila Prehistoric Site, Tanzania. In: Nature. Volume 237, 1972, pp. 51-52, doi: 10.1038 / 237051a0
6. ^ Website of the Human Evolution Research Center
7. ↑ www.berkeley.edu/news : “ Famed paleoanthropologist Clark Howell has died. "(March 13, 2007)