- Franz Weidenreich
Infobox Scientist
name = Franz Weidenreich
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caption = Franz Weidenreich
birth_date =7 June 1873
birth_place =Edenkoben
death_date =11 July 1948
death_place =New York City
residence =
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nationality =Germany
ethnicity =
field = physical anthropologist
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alma_mater =University of Strasbourg
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doctoral_students =
known_for =human evolution
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Franz Weidenreich (7 June 1873 ,Edenkoben ,Germany -11 July 1948 ,New York City U.S. ) was aJew ish Germananatomist and physical anthropologist who studied humanevolution . He studied at theUniversity of Strasbourg (one of the leading German universities while Straßburg was still German) where he earned a medical degree in 1899. In 1903 Franz Weidenreich succeeded Wilhelm Pfitzner as Prosektor and was a professor there from 1904 to 1918 and at theUniversity of Heidelberg from 1921 to 1924, he was a visiting professor at theUniversity of Chicago in 1934. In 1935 he succeededCanadian paleoanthropologist Davidson Black as honorary director of theCenozoic Research Laboratory of theGeological Survey of China .In many ways, Franz Weidenreich was one of the most important and influential scientists studying
human evolution in the Twentieth century. For the first half of the Twentieth Century, almost allanthropologists believed thatPiltdown Man was the ancestor ofmodern man . Piltdown Man had the characteristics that many scientists had predicted for amissing link , a large cranial capacity and ape-like teeth. The true "missing links" were theAustralopithecus species that were just the opposite (small cranial capacity and human-like teeth) that anthropologists had hoped for. In the 1920s, thirty years beforefluoride analyses proved that Piltdown Man was a hoax in 1953, Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern humancranium and aorangutan jaw with filed-down teeth. Weidenreich, being an anatomist, easily exposed the hoax for what it was. However, it took thirty years for the scientific community to concede that Weidenreich was correct.As honorary director of the
Cenozoic Research Laboratory he also studied fossils of thePeking Man , then known as "Sinanthropus pekinensis", unearthed atZhoukoudian ,China . Weidenreich originated the "Weidenreich Theory of Human Evolution" based on his examination of Peking Man. Being an anatomist, Weidenreich observed numerous anatomical characteristics that Peking Man had in common with modern Asians. The Weidenreich Theory states that human races have evolved independently in theOld World fromHomo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens, while at the same time there was gene flow between the various populations. According to the Weidenreich Theory, genes that were generally adaptive (such as those for intelligence and communication) would flow relatively rapidly from one part of the world to the other, while those that were locally adaptive, would not. This is contrary to popular theories of human evolution that have one superior race displacing other races. A vocal proponent of the Weidenreich theory was Carleton Coon.Professor Weidenreich also renamed "
Gigantopithecus blacki " to "Giganthropus blacki ", based on a theory that primitive forms of man were much larger than the more recent ones. However, as this theory is contradictory to the Cope-Deperet rule (which states that in straight evolution lines of non-flying animals the size of species increases, not the other way round), it was rejected by Professor Dr. von Koenigswald when he returned from the Japanese concentration camp after theSecond World War .References
*Citation
id =PMID :13477368
url= http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13477368
last=McCORT
first=J J
publication-date=1957 Oct 3
year=1957
title=Franz Weidenreich; 1873-1948.
volume=257
issue=14
periodical=N. Engl. J. Med.
pages=670-1External References
* [http://www.uiowa.edu/~bioanth/giganto.html Franz Weidenreich and "Gigantopithecus"]
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