The Man Who Found The Missing Link: The Life And Times Of Eugene: The Extraordinary Life of Eugene Dubois - Hardcover

Shipman, Pat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297842900 ISBN 13: 9780297842903

Publisher: W&N, 2001

Synopsis

Pat Shipman's latest book is a scientific biography, written like a novel. It tells the story of one of the greatest scientists at the turn of the century - a Dutchman called Eugene Dubois - now largely forgotten, but the man whose discovery of the 'missing link' altered our view of human origins. Through force of personality, intellect and luck, Dubois pulled off one of the most amazing scientific coups of all time. As a young man, he decided that the most important contribution a man could make to science would be to find the missing link, the extinct form that exemplifies the evolutionary connection between humans and apes. It would be the proof of Darwinian evolution, then still controversial. He deduced where the missing link should be and found the fossil, now known as homo erectus, in Java in 1891. Shipman uses a fascinating range of letters, diaries and photographs from Dubois' personal collection, friends and enemies to create a story-driven account of how Dubois' life and career exploded across the world in the 1890s. This man's passion and scientific genius engulfed him and his friends' lives in a chain reaction of inspiration and betrayal that orbited around his precious fossils for forty years.

About this title

Review

Like many scientists of his generation, Eugene Dubois (1858-1940) was devoted to the ideas of Charles Darwin. He was also profoundly ambitious, seeking not only to establish incontrovertible proof of human evolution from some apelike ancestor and thus reinforce Darwin's theories, but also to earn a place for himself at the head of modern scholarship.

Logic dictated, writes Pat Shipman in her thoughtful biography of Dubois, that the remains of apelike ancestors would be found in the tropics, and such fossils had indeed been turning up throughout the Dutch East Indies, to which he travelled in 1887. There he conducted a rigorous campaign of excavations that yielded fruit, four years later, with the discovery of fragmentary remains of a creature that he called Pithecanthropus erectus, the "upright-standing apeman" who constituted a missing link between modern humans and their distant ancestors.

Dubois's discovery met with controversy on a number of fronts, and on his return to Europe he complicated matters by refusing to allow other scholars to examine his fossil collection; irascible, competitive and even paranoid, Dubois managed to alienate even would-be allies, and thus to distance himself from the scientific community. Effectively self-ostracised, Dubois was deprived of the honours and appointments for which he had strived. Her arguments sometimes seem overwrought, but all the same Shipman helps rehabilitate the reputation of this "underestimated man" by pointing to Dubois's many contributions to evolutionary theory. --Gregory McNamee

Synopsis

Written in the style of a novel, this biography tells the story of one the greatest turn-of-the-century scientists, the Dutchman Eugene Dubois, whose discovery of the "missing link" completely altered our view of human origins. Through sheer force of personality, intellect and luck, Dubois pulled off one of the most amazing scientific coups of all time. As a young man, he decided that the most important contribution a man could make to science would be to find the missing link, the extinct form that exemplifies the evolutionary connection between apes and humans. It would be proof of Darwinian evolution, then still a highly controversial theory. On the basis of logic he deduced where the missing line should be, went to Java in 1891, and found the fossil now known as "homo erectus". Dubois was a brilliant and complex character who guarded his fossils jealously: "homo erectus" was kept on his bookshelf for 20 years. In this biography, Shipman uses a range of letters, diaries and photographs from Dubois' personal collection and those of friends, enemies and admirers to create a story driven account of how Dubois' life and career exploded across the world in the 1890s.

Edition details

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0297842900
• ISBN 13: 9780297842903
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 586