ASHLEY MONTAGU (1905-1999), internationally renowned anthropologist and social biologist, spent a lifetime examining and exposing some of the most widely held myths concerning humankind.
Born in London in 1905, he came to the U.S. in 1927 to begin graduate studies at Columbia University in New York. He taught anatomy and anthropology at New York University in the 1930s, received a PhD in anthropology in 1937 at Columbia, and was chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University from 1949 to 1955. He also taught at Harvard, Princeton and the University of California at Santa Barbara.
In a prolific book-writing career that spanned six decades, Montagu ventured into the controversial areas of race, child¬-rearing and relations between the sexes. Against a solid background of scientific evidence, he showed the theory of racial superiority to be fallacious, dismantled the notion that man is naturally superior to woman, and was emphatic about the tremendous importance of proper child-rearing, socially, biologically and psychologically.
The Natural Superiority of Women (1953), The Elephant Man (1971), Touching (1987), Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1971), and The Human Connection (1979) are among his best-known books.
Current Biography points out: "During the 1950s Montagu was perhaps the best-known anthropologist and one of the most popular university professors in the United States."
