Tim D. White

White at the 2010 Time 100 Gala.

Tim D. White (born Timothy Douglas White; August 24, 1950[1]) is an American paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most famous for his work on Lucy as Australopithecus afarensis with discoverer Donald Johanson.

Career

White was born in Los Angeles County, California and raised in Lake Arrowhead in neighboring San Bernardino County.[2] He majored in biology and anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. He received his Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Michigan. White took a position in the Department of Anthropology[3] at the University of California, Berkeley in 1977 later migrating to the university's Department of Integrative Biology.[4] At present, White teaches courses on human paleontology and human osteology. Generally, each spring semester he teaches one of the two in alternation.[5][6]

He is director of the Human Evolution Research Center and co-director, with Berhane Asfaw, Yonas Beyene, and Giday WoldeGabriel, of the Middle Awash Research Project.

White has mentored a number of prominent paleoanthropologists, such as Berhane Asfaw, William Henry Gilbert, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, and Gen Suwa.

Collaborations

In 1974 White worked with Richard Leakey's team at Koobi Fora, Kenya. Richard Leakey was so impressed with White's work he recommended White to his mother, Mary Leakey, to help her with hominid fossils she had found at Laetoli, Tanzania.

White took a job at the University of California, Berkeley in 1977 and collaborated with J. Desmond Clark and F. Clark Howell. In 1994, White discovered what was then the oldest known human ancestor: 4.4 million-year-old Ar. ramidus. Found near the Awash River in Ethiopia, an almost complete fossilized female skeleton named "Ardi" took nearly 15 years to prepare publication of the description.[7]

In 1996, White, along with paleontologist Berhane Asfaw discovered fossils of a 2.5 million-year-old species BOU-VP-12/130 Australopithecus garhi, which is thought to predate H. habilis tool use and manufacturing by 100,000 to 600,000 years.

Honors

Select publications

See also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.amacad.org/members/new2002list.aspx
  2. ↑ http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/whi0bio-1
  3. ↑ cites the fact that he was originally in the Dept. of Anthropology
  4. ↑ Last article explicitly noting affiliation with Dept. of Anthropology First article explicitly noting affiliated with Dept. of Integrative Biology
  5. ↑ UC Berkeley General Catalog - Integrative Biology http://sis.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_req?p_dept_name=Integrative+Biology&p_dept_cd=INTEGBI
  6. ↑ UC Berkeley Department of Integrative Biology: Undergraduate Courses http://ib.berkeley.edu/student/courses/lists/undergrad.php
  7. ↑ Tim D. White, Berhane Asfaw, Yonas Beyene, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, C. Owen Lovejoy, Gen Suwa, Giday WoldeGabrie: Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids. In: Science 326 (5949), 2009, pp. 75–86; doi:10.1126/science.1175802 PMID 19810190
  8. ↑ Fellows of the California Academy of Sciences
  9. ↑ AAAS - Fellows "WHITE, TIM D, UNIV OF CAL BERKELEY, BERKELEY, USA"

External links