Prudence Hero Napier

Prudence "Prue" Hero Napier (* 1916 in Liverpool , England as Prudence Hero Rutherford , † June 6, 1997 on the Isle of Mull , Scotland ) was a British primatologist and non-fiction author. She was one of the leading experts in the field of primate taxonomy .

Life

Napier was the daughter of Sir Hugo Rutherford , a politician and Member of Parliament for North Liverpool. In 1936 she married the primatologist and surgeon John Russell Napier , who in the 1950s was convinced that the functional anatomy of humans cannot be properly explained without knowledge of the anatomy of non-human primates. Subsequently, John Napier established the Primatology Unit at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, the first center in Great Britain devoted to the study of non-human primates. Prue Napier actively supported her husband in his research work, initially as a supportive force and finally on his own initiative. In 1967, John and Prue Napier published their first book, A Handbook of the Living Primates , which is now one of the standard works in the literature on non-human primates. In 1969 the Napiers hosted a primatological and anthropological conference of the Wenner-Gren Foundation , the reports of which they published in the 1970 book Old World Monkeys . 1970 Prue Napier wrote her own first book titled Monkeys and Apes , which was primarily aimed at children and young people and in 1971 in a German translation of Gerhard Rietschel entitled monkeys and apes in Dolphin Publishing appeared. The textbooks Chimpanzees and Lemurs, Lorises and Bushbabies followed in 1974 and 1977 .

As a result of her research on her books, Napier increasingly focused on taxonomy. In 1971 she worked part-time at the Natural History Museum in London, where she published three volumes of the five-volume Catalog of Primates in the British Museum (Natural History) (1976–1990), including Families Callitrichidae and Cebidae (1976), Family Cercopithecidae, Subfamily Cercopithecinae ( 1981) and Family Cercopithecidae, Subfamily Colobinae (1985). The other two volumes, Suborder Strepsirrhini, including the subfossil Madagascan lemurs and Family Tarsiidae and The apes, Superfamily Hominoidea, are by Paulina D. Jenkins .

Private

The marriage of Prue and John Napier had two sons: Hugo Napier , who works as an actor ( General Hospital , James Bond 007 - Tomorrow Never Dies ) and Graeme Napier, the safari guide in Kenya. In 1982 the Napiers withdrew to the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides .

Works

• A Handbook of Living Primates. Morphology, Ecology and Behavior of Nonhuman Primates. , 1967 (with John R. Napier)
• Old World Monkeys , 1970 (with John R. Napier)
• Monkey and Apes , Hamlyn, 1970 (German: Affen und Menschenaffen, Delphin Taschenbuch in color No. 22, Delphin Verlag, 1971, translation: Gerhard Rietschel)
• Chimpanzees , The Bodley Head (New Biology), London, 1974
• Monkeys & Apes: Wild, Wild World of Animals , Time-Life, 1976 (with John R. Napier) (German: The world of wild animals: Affen, Christian Verlag , Munich, 1979)
• Lemurs, Lorises and Bushbabies , The Bodley Head (New Biology), London, 1977

literature

• Colin P. Groves: Obituary: Prudence Hero Napier (1916-1997) . In: International Journal of Primatology . 19, No. 2, April 1998, pp. 203-205. doi : 10.1023 / A: 1020348119579 .
• Prudence Hero Napier (1916-1997): a tribute. Obituaries by Douglas Brandon-Jones, Colin Groves, and Anthony B. Rylands In: Primate Eye No. 63. Primate Society of Great Britain, October 1997. ISSN  0305-8417
• Douglas Brandon-Jones & Christine Brandon-Jones: Obituary: Prudence Hero Napier In Neotropical Primates 5 (2), June 1997. p. 34