Research Catalog

Title

The man who found the missing link : Eugène Dubois and his lifelong quest to prove Darwin right / Pat Shipman.

Author

Shipman, Pat, 1949-

Publication

New York : Simon & Schuster, c2001.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

514 p. : ill., maps, ports.; 25 cm.

Summary

"The Dubois family motto, "Recte et fortiter," means straight and strong, and Dubois lived it to the letter. He willfully abandoned his home and promising career at the University of Amsterdam to drag his wife and baby daughter halfway around the world to search the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) for the legendary missing link. After five years, two weeks, and three days of life-threatening work, Dubois' excavations yielded the missing link. It was a form he called Pithecanthropus erectus, a heavily fossilized skullcap, tooth, and femur (thigh hone) of an ape-man the like of which the world had never seen." "Drawing on Dubois' personal archives, to which she has had unprecedented access, Pat Shipman sets the historic and scientific record right in this dramatic and moving biography. In her revisionist view, Dubois is the unrecognized father of modern paleoanthropology (the science of human origins and evolution), one of the greatest discoverers of human origins. He was much more than just a fossil-finder; he was a scientist of genius."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• Dubois, Eugène, 1858-1940
• Paleontology > history
• Biological Evolution
• Anthropology, Physical > history
• Java man
• Physical anthropologists > Netherlands > Biography
• Physical anthropologists > Indonesia > Java > Biography
• Indonesia

Genre/Form

• Biography
• Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 479-495) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

An echo of the past -- The beginning -- The game -- Ambition -- Lightning rod -- Love and conflict -- Turning point -- To find the missing link -- Logistics -- Padang -- Pajakombo -- Fossils -- Garuda -- Fevers and spells -- To Java -- Java fossils -- Coolies -- Discoveries at Trinil -- Gathering resources -- Friendship -- Trinil -- The birth of Pithecanthropus -- 1893 -- Disaster -- Letters from a friend -- Aftermath -- Perseverance -- The monograph -- Writing up -- Separation and loss -- Intermission -- To India -- Calcutta -- Sirmoor State -- Siwalik adventures -- Leaving India -- Toeloeng Agoeng -- Departure -- Europe -- The battlefield -- More skirmishes -- Using his brains -- Betrayal and resurrection -- Family -- The new century -- Diversions -- Tragedy -- Dangerous times -- A new skull -- Rumors and isolation -- Brain work -- The diligent assistant -- New skulls from Java -- A worthy opponent -- To the battlefront -- The letter -- Pretender to the throne -- Old friends -- The final conflict.

ISBN

068485581X

LCCN

^^^00044049^

OCLC

• 44391624
• SCSB-10244504

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library