My PhD supervisor, colleague and friend, Michael Day, died on June 1, 2018. Michael, who was one of my anatomy teachers, introduced me to human evolution.
'Sideways Look' Blog
Read posts authored by CASHP's Bernard Wood, University Professor of Human Origins, on research, academia and other experience in the field.
Louis Leakey’s presentation of the results of research at Olduvai was the focus of the The Origin...
Many conferences have been devoted to the topic of human origins. Most of these have the equivalent of...
Some people make an impression out of all proportion to the time you spend with them. For me, Hertha de...
Entitled Males - Art Imitates Life
The year that soon comes to an end has seen discussions within various scientific disciplines about the...
When I came to the US nearly twenty years ago, one of the many differences I noticed was the lack in...
Australia has consistently punched above its weight with respect to medical research. It has also been...
Bernard Wood describes an experience in the Miegunyah Fellowship and interaction with students and staff as a visiting scholar at University of Melbourne.
Homo nadeli - Through the Eyes of Albert C. Barnes
It is just over six months since the publication [1] of the paper proposing the name Homo naledi...
Elwyn Simons died a week ago today. He was 85. My condolences to Friderun, his children and...
The Lesser among Too Many Evils
The cat is out of the bag. Michael Balter’s piece in Science [1] has very publically aired serious...
At the beginning of the year we moved into a splendid new building called the Science and Engineering...
Thirty years ago today, Glynn Isaac, then aged 47, died.
Glynn had called in to...
Our new academic year has just begun, leading to thoughts of the future and reflections on the past....
“The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse”
(Edmund Burke speaking in the House...
One of the many definitions of “authority” in my American Heritage Dictionary is “an accepted source of...
Publishers have all-but-abandoned conference volumes, but when I started my career, and thanks in large...
Thank you for asking me to comment on the attached manuscript by Lorkipanidze et al. entitled ‘A...
A Pioneer Who Deserves More Recognition
If you are in an aircraft that is landing at London Heathrow Airport from the east (i.e., approaching...
Publications That (Should Have) Made a Difference: No. 3. 'Thinking Outside the Box'
If you go to a meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) and make your way...
Peer-Review: An Endangered 'Species'?
In the old days one of the “perks” of being medically-qualified in the UK was that if you or your...
Whither the Peer-Review System?
My first real non-clinical job was as a very junior lecturer in the Anatomy Department of The Middlesex...
The New Yorker is a constant source of delight. If a person finds nothing of...
Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
Consider this thought experiment. You spend many years of your life preparing to be the first person to...
Never pass down an opportunity to visit the UC Irvine campus. It does not have history on its side, but...
I was sworn-in as a US citizen today in Portland, Oregon.
There were 37 of us from 19 countries...
The composer Elliot Carter died on November 6th. It would be dishonest to pretend that I listened much...
Remembering a Different Kind of Consistency
The armistice at the end of the First World War (also called the Great War) was signed at 11am on...
I spent most of the day yesterday ‘fall cleaning’ my office, and in doing so I recovered/uncovered some...
If you Google “phases of the research process”, the first item is a link to this document. You can...
Just what sort of work habits, intellect and personality do you need to be a successful researcher? And...
Phillip Vallentine Tobias (known by all as “PVT”) was the undisputed doyen of the palaeoanthropological...
Morris Goodman’s 1963 review entitled Man’s place in the phylogeny of primates as reflected in...
What I Did Over My Spring Break
Let me begin with a confession. Although I have consulted Franz Weidenreich’s Sinanthropus...
Some background. For a long time the main political parties in the United Kingdom were called the...
Fruits of Browsing: No. 3 ‘Small, But Perfectly Formed’
A relatively painless way to learn about science is to read biographies of scientists. What better way...
Fruits of Browsing: No. 2 ‘Up Close and Personal’
If you want to capture the essence of the English countryside, my recommendation would be to spend time...
Fruits of Browsing: No. 1 ‘Sometimes You Get Lucky’
The older I get the more I appreciate those who explore and document the history of science, and...
Publications That Made a Difference: No. 2. ‘Looking Beyond Modern Human-Type Bipedalism’
Among the fossils recovered from Swartkrans in 1949 were two fragments that preserve the proximal end...
“For every complex problem, there is a simple, easy to understand, incorrect answer” -Albert von...
It will not be long before we will be receiving emails from the Graduate Admissions Office of GW’s Columbian...
Publications That Made a Difference: No. 1. ‘Sometimes Clout Matters’
When I was a lad the electronic media largely consisted of radio. My favorite shows (mostly listened to...
Silvana Condemi and Ger-Christian Weniger’s 2011 edited volume (Continuity and Discontinuity in...
The Heat to Light Index (sometimes abbreviated to ‘H2L’ and computed as Heat/Light x 100) is a little...
Emulate, but Choose Your Model with Care
Way back in the Neolithic, when I was in the UK equivalent of US high school, we took two sets of...
This is the first ‘post’ in what we plan will be a regular series. For those who know just how...