Joseph S. Weiner and the foundation of post‐WW II human biology in the United Kingdom

Abstract

Both the United States and the United Kingdom experienced a transformation in the science of physical anthropology from the period before World War II until the post-war period. In the United States, Sherwood L. Washburn is credited with being a leading figure in this transformation. In the United Kingdom, two individuals were instrumental in bringing about a similar change in the profession. These were Joseph S. Weiner at the University of Oxford and Nigel Barnicot at the University of London, with Weiner playing the principal role as leader in what Washburn called the ''New Physical Anthropology,'' that is, the application of evolutionary theory, the de-emphasis on race classification, and the application of the scientific method and experimental approaches to problem solving. Weiner's contributions to physical anthropology were broad-based-climatic and work physiology, paleoanthropology, and human variation-in what became known as human biology in the U.K. and human adaptability internationally. In the mid to late 1930s, physical anthropology was expanding in the United States. By 1939, Earnest A. Hooton (1887-1954) had trained 13 professional physical anthropologists at Harvard, with eight more to finish during the Second World War (Giles, 1997). Most of these former students of Hooton, and a few others trained elsewhere, were to find employment at colleges, universities, and institutions that were growing after the end of the war. In the United Kingdom, there were limited academic positions in physical anthropology; few students were trained before the war and almost none were trained during the war, a war that began in late 1939, more than two years before the United States entered the conflict. The prominent physical anthropology figures in the U.K. directly before the war were Sir Arthur Keith (1866Keith ( -1955, who had retired from the conservatorship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1933, Wilfrid E. Le Gros Clark (1895-1971, who assumed the Head of Anatomy at Oxford in 1934, and Leonard H.D. Buxton (1889Buxton ( -1939, who had been a Reader in Physical Anthropology at Oxford (within Anatomy) since 1927. Le Gros Clark's interests were neuroanatomy, primatology, paleoanthropology, and evolution, and Buxton's principal interests were in craniology, archaeology, and ethnology. Buxton died right at the outset of the war in 1939, and the Readership in Physical Anthropology at Oxford was frozen then until after the war.Arthur Keith was the most prominent and influential physical anthropologist in the U.K. in the early years of the 20th century. He was a Scottish anatomist who was best known for his studies of human fossils. As a strong supporter of a European origin for modern humans, he believed that the Piltdown fossil specimens were prime examples of this European origin. He was, however, quite traditional in following his interests in physical anthropology, and as with others in the profession, both in the U.S. and the U.K, his training was based in anatomy and his interests were in skeletal ...

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