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Bernard Wood
User:
The Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) proudly announces our first Visiting Professor of Anthropogeny, Professor Bernard A. Wood who was also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Professor Wood is University Professor of Human Origins, Professor of Human Evolutionary Anatomy, and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at The George Washington University. The GW Center includes almost 30 faculty members whose interests represent and overlap with those of CARTA. Professor Wood serves as one of CARTA's external advisors, and has been involved in our efforts for almost a decade.
Professor Wood received his M.D., Ph.D. and D.Sc from the University of London, and is a medically qualified paleoanthropologist who practiced as a surgeon before moving into full-time academic life in 1972. He has held the S.A. Courtauld Chair of Anatomy in The University of London, and the Derby Chair of Anatomy in The University of Liverpool where he also served as Dean before moving into the Anthropology Department at George Washington University in 1997. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain.
When still a medical student, Professor Wood joined Richard Leakey's first expedition to what was then Lake Rudolf in 1968, and he has remained associated with that research group ever since. His work centers on ways to improve the way we can use the fossil record to clarify human evolutionary history. He is the author or co-author of eight books, >160 refereed articles or book chapters, >130 papers or posters, >50 commentaries and encyclopedia entries, >90 book reviews and one electronic database.
His contributions to the field are both visionary and legendary. All of his work reflects his profound knowledge of anatomy, taxonomic principles, and evolutionary theory as well as his ability to understand and integrate fields spanning geology, geochronology, and biogeography. He is unequalled in combining expertise in the fossil record with a real understanding of brain evolution, and his classic papers demonstrated clearly that ours was only one of several bipedal human-like lineages to have emerged 2 to 3 million years ago, truly a startling disclosure.
During his 3-month visit to CARTA and Anthropology at UCSD, Professor Wood gave seminars, taught in Anthropology courses, interacted with interested faculty and students, and continued to advise CARTA on its development.