Washburn, Sherwood L(arned) (1911–2000)

US physical anthropologist. A leading authority on primate and human evolution, he stressed the importance of field studies for modelling the behaviour of extinct hominids. He edited Social Life of Early Man (1962), and published several books on human evolution. Washburn was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Educated at Harvard University, he later taught at Columbia University (1939–47), the University of Chicago (1947–58), and the University of California, Berkeley (1958–79).