Eugene Dubois
Marie Eugène François Thomas
Dubois (28 January 1858 – 16 December 1940) was a Dutch
anatomist.
He earned
world-wide fame for his discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus , or 'Java
Man'.
Biography
Dubois was
born in Eijsden
, Netherlands, Europe.
Human discoveries
Although hominid fossils had been found and studied before, Dubois
was the first anthropologist to embark upon a purposeful search for
them. He was convinced that the origins of the human species must
be in the tropics.
For this reason he joined the Dutch army in
the Dutch East
Indies
(the Dutch colony that would later become
independent Indonesia
).
Between
1886 and 1895, Dubois searched at potential sites near rivers and
in caves, first on the island of Sumatra
, then on the
Indonesian island of Java.
In 1891, Dubois discovered remains of what he described as "a
species in between humans and apes". He called his finds
Pithecanthropus erectus ("ape-human which stood upright")
or
Java Man. Today, they are classified as
Homo erectus ("human which
stood upright"). These were the first specimens of early
hominid remains to be found outside of Africa or
Europe.
In 1895, Dubois returned to Europe and toured the continent to
convince his colleagues that he had indeed found a missing link.
Although most anthropologists were intrigued, they did not always
agree with Dubois' interpretations. After that, Dubois refused
others access to his fossils, until he was forced to do so in
1923.
Later years
In 1897,
the University of
Amsterdam
awarded Dubois an honorary doctorate in botany and
zoology, but he had to wait until 1899 for a professorship.
In that year, he was appointed a professor in
geology, a function that did not keep him from his
research in
anatomy.
He was also (from 1897
until 1928) keeper of paleontology,
geology and mineralogy at Teylers' Museum
, where he also kept the H. erectus
remains.
Although the scientific debate slowly began to turn in his favour
in the 1920s and 1930s, he died embittered in 1940.
He was buried in
Venlo
.
His
paleontological collection and scientific archive remain at
Naturalis
in Leiden.
See also
References
- "Eugene Dubois". Retrieved on 2008-06-02 from
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/abcde/dubois_eugene.html.
- Vos J. de (2004) The Dubois collection: a new look at an
old collection Scripta Geologica Special Issue 4 p. 267-285
PDF
Further Reading
- Pat Shipman, The Man who Found the Missing Link.
Eugène Dubois and His Lifelong Quest to Prove Darwin
Right, Harvard University Press (April 30, 2002), 528 pages,
ISBN 0674008669.
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