John T. Robinson
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John Talbot Robinson (1923 - 2001) was a distinguished hominid paleontologist.
[edit] History
Robinson was born in South Africa and it was there he spent his student years and developed a lasting interest in the human fossils that were emerging from cave deposits in the Sterkfontein Valley. After training in Cape Town as a zoologist, John moved to Pretoria in 1946, to take up a post at the Transvaal Museum. In Pretoria, he worked with Robert Broom. They focused on excavations at the caves of Sterkfontein, Kromdaai and Swartkrans and descriptions of their contents. Between 1946 and 1952 they jointly published 23 books and articles.
After Broom's death in 1951, Robinson took over as head of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology and Physical Anthropology. In 1956, he published what is arguably his most important work, a monograph titled The Dentition of the Australopthecinae after which the University of Cape Town awarded him the Doctor of Science a degree.
In 1963 Robinson began a Professorship at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin. He was a gifted teacher and taught courses in evolutionary theory and human origins, zoology and anthropology. Robinson continued to make trips back to South Africa to carry out research. He died in Madison, Wisconsin in 2001. His most famous discovery (with Robert Broom) was the nearly complete fossil skull of an Australopithecus africanus known as Mrs. Ples.
