Phillip V. Tobias

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Phillip Valentine Tobias is a South African palaeoanthropologist.

Born in Durban, Natal, on 14th October 1925, the son of Joseph Newman Tobias and Fanny Rosendorff. He is one of South Africa's most honoured and decorated scientists, and a world leading expert on human prehistoric ancestors; he has been nominated three times for a Nobel Prize; received a dozen honorary doctorates; been awarded South Africa's Order for Meritorious Service; and received the Charles R. Darwin Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award; and many other awards, honours and medals.

First schooling in Bloemfontein and Durban, he proceeded to the University of the Witwatersrand where he completed a BSc(Hons) degree, a MBBCh and a PhD in genetics (1953). He was awarded a DSc in palaeoanthropology (1967) at the same university. He spent his entire student and working career in close association with the University of the Witwatersrand. He was appointed as a lecturer in anatomy in 1951 and eight years later as Professor and Head of Anatomy and Human Biology succeeding his mentor and eminent scholar, Professor Raymond Dart, in the Chair. He occupied this position for 32 years retiring as Department Head in December 1990 and from a full-time position in the same Department in 1993.

His research has been mainly in the fields of paleoanthropology and the human biology of African people. He has studied the Kalahari San, the Tonga peoples of Zambia and numerous black races of Southern Africa. Phillip Tobias is best known for his research on hominid fossils and human evolution, having studied and described hominid fossils from Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia. His best known work was on the hominids of East Africa, particularly those of the Olduvai Gorge. Collaborating with Louis Leakey, they identified, described and named the new species Homo habilis. Cambridge University Press published two volumes on the fossils of Homo habilis from the Olduvai Gorge. He is closely linked with the archaeological excavation at the Sterkfontein site, a research programme he initiated in 1966. The Sterkfontein cave has seen the most sustained excavation of a single site in the world. This site has yielded the largest single sample of Australopithecus africanus as well as the first known example of Homo habilis from Southern Africa. It is now a world heritage site.

[edit] Achievements and awards

Tobias has published over 600 journal articles and authored or co-authored 33 books and edited or co-edited eight others.He has received honorary degrees from seventeen universities and other academic institutions in South Africa, the United States of America, Canada and Europe. He has been elected as a fellow, associate or honorary member of over 28 learned societies. These include being elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. Among the very many medals, awards and prizes he has received are the Balzan International Prize for Physical Anthropology and the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (1997). The Royal Society of South Africa is very sparing with its honours, and Tobias is one of only two South African Honorary Fellows of the Society and one of very few recipients of its senior medal, the John Herschel Medal.

He holds the positions of Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Honorary Professor of Palaeo-anthropology, Honorary Professorial Research Associate and Director of the Sterkfontein Research Unit, and Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York USA. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Cambridge University and other institutions. He has taught over 10 000 students during his fifty years of service at Wits Medical School.

He is known to be opposed to apartheid against which he campaigned actively throughout his adult life, and became a major figure in opposing the predjuces of the system.