Sherwood L. Washburn

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Sherwood Larned Washburn (born November 26, 1911 in Cambridge , Massachusetts , † April 16, 2000 in Berkeley , California ) was an American anthropologist and paleoanthropologist .

Career

Sherwood ("Sherry") Washburn was the second son of Rev Henry Bradford Washburn, who was Dean of the Episcopal Theological School . Sherwood Washburn was taught in private schools and after attending the Groton School in Groton (Massachusetts) (from 1926 to 1931) at Harvard University , where he obtained his bachelor's degree in 1935 . He then wrote his doctoral thesis under Earnest Hooton until 1940 in the field of osteology on Asian langurs and macaques , whose skeletal system he examined comparatively.

Washburn then taught anatomy under Theodosius Dobzhansky at the Medical School of Columbia University ( New York ) . In 1947 he went to the University of Chicago , where he was employed in the Department of Anthropology. In 1958 he was appointed to a professorship in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley , which he held until his retirement in 1979. In 1962 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1963 to the National Academy of Sciences .

Research topics

During his studies, Sherwood Washburn had the opportunity to take part in an expedition to Thailand , during which Asian primates were researched. Nonetheless, in New York, he first researched the growth of the bones in the head of rats in the hope of being able to make comparisons with primates. However, this approach met with great skepticism from his superiors, so that after moving to Chicago he only dealt with the anatomy of primates and their behavior.

His first stay in Africa (1948) not only brought him the acquaintance of Raymond Dart and Robert Broom , but later also gave him the opportunity to study the behavior of baboons in Kenya from 1955 , from which he gained important insights into the evolution of behavior won in humans: he was one of the first anthropologists who, in addition to comparing their anatomical characteristics, also took into account the behavior of recent species when reconstructing the tribal history of primates . This reorientation of anthropology initiated by Washburn, which his student Francis Clark Howell also took up, prompted Louis Leakey in the early 1960s to have Jane Goodall research the behavior of wild chimpanzees and, a little later, Dian Fossey ( gorillas ) and Birutė Galdikas ( Orangutans ).

Reorientation of anthropology

In an obituary from the University of California, Berkeley , Washburn was recognized as the “father of modern primate research” for its holistic approach: “Washburn was the first to point out that tool use, hunting, and the division of labor between the sexes are critical to human evolution have been. ” The background to this award was u. a. also that Washburn, together with Theodosius Dobzhansky, organized the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology in 1950 , as a result of which the fixation of anthropologists on “ ideal human racial characteristics” was abandoned and instead the focus was turned to real populations - which is a departure from the latent Racism was to be equated with the anthropology of the previous hundred years. This proposal for a reorientation of the subject was published in 1951 in his work The new physical anthropology, which was later reprinted several times . The reorientation of anthropology initiated by Sherwood Washburn gained worldwide recognition through two international congresses that he organized in the early 1960s and their volumes of results ( Social Life of Early Man , 1961, and Classification and Human Evolution , 1963).

In 1962, Sherwood Washburn, in his capacity as President of the American Anthropological Association, condemned a publication by his controversial colleague Carleton Coon in an address at the organization's annual meeting . His recently published book The Origin of Races was then cited by supporters of racial segregation as supposedly scientific evidence of the justification of their claims and was also praised by some anthropologists for its expressiveness. Washburn's criticism was published under the title The Study of Race , to which the primate researcher and geneticist Jonathan Marks, in whose seminar Washburn gave his last scientific lecture in 1998, noted in an obituary: “It can hardly be doubted that Coon and other elderly, reactionaries Colleagues saw in him a traitor to his race and class. "

Sherwood Washburn served for many years with the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and edited the American Journal of Physical Anthropology . On April 16, 2000, he died of complications from pneumonia at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley. He had been married to Henrietta Pease from 1938 until her death in 1985; Washburn left two sons.

Publications

  • The new physical anthropology. In: Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II. Volume 13, 1951, pp. 298-304.
  • Evolution of human behavior. In: A. Roe, GG Simpson: Behavior and Evolution. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1958.
  • as editor: Social Life of Early Man. Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago 1961.
  • The Study of Race. In: American Anthropologist , Vol. 65, 1963, pp. 521-532.
  • as editor: Classification and Human Evolution. Wenner-Gren Foundation, New York 1963.
  • with Ruth Moore: Ape Into Man. Little, Brown, Boston 1974.
  • Tools and Human Evolution. In: Glynn Isaac , Richard Leakey : Human Ancestors. WH Freeman, San Francisco 1979, ISBN 978-0-7167-1101-8 .
  • Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the ǃKung San and Their Neighbors. iUniverse, 1999, ISBN 1-583-48125-7 .
  • with Thomas Marlowe and Charles T. Ryan: Discrete Mathematics. Addison-Wesley, Wokingham, Berks 1999.

Web links

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  • Jonathan Marks: Sherwood Washburn, 1911 - 2000. Evolutionary Anthropology 9, No. 6, pp. 225–226, 2000. - as a PDF file ( Memento from September 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The University of California Obituary by Francis Clark Howell
  2. ^ National Primate Research Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison "He brought together an unprecedented variety of disciplines to provide insight into the evolutionary origins of human anatomy and behavior. He opened up the study of primate behavior in natural habitats. "(David A. Hamburg, Carnegie Foundation)
  3. ^ "Washburn was the first to propose that tool use, hunting and a gender division in labor had been critical in human evolution. He also saw 40 years ago that humans had evolved from an ancestor that walked on its knuckles, like contemporary great apes. "In: [1] -" Sherwood L. Washburn, father of modern primatology and UC Berkeley professor of anthropology emeritus, dies at age 88. "(April 17, 2000)
  4. ↑ Jonathan Marks: Sherwood Washburn, 1911-2000. Evolutionary Anthropology 9, 2000, p. 225
  5. ↑ Jonathan Marks: Sherwood Washburn, 1911-2000. Evolutionary Anthropology 9, 2000, p. 226
  6. ↑ San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 2000: Obituary for Sherwood Washburn - Famed Anthropologist.
personal data
SURNAME Washburn, Sherwood L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Washburn, Sherwood Larned; Washburn, sherry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleoanthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge , Massachusetts , United States
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 2000
Place of death Berkeley , California , United States