>Sender: >To: >X-Original-Message-ID: <253801bf3a91$3ce25cc0$9acf69cf@pacbell.net> >From: "Peter McWilliams" >Subject: The good die old >Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 09:43:25 -0800 >X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 >X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 > > >November 29, 1999 > > >'Professor' Ashley Montagu, 94, Popularizer of Science >By ANTHONY RAMIREZ > >shley Montagu, the London-born anthropologist and popular author whose >energy, erudition and showmanship brought genetics, paleontology and other >topics in the life sciences to a wide American audience, died Friday in >Princeton, N.J. He was 94. > >The author of more than 60 books, Montagu recently completed a substantial >revision, published this year, of his influential 1953 book, "The Natural >Superiority of Women," and was collaborating with his biographer, Susan >Sperling, when he was hospitalized in March. He died of protracted >cardiovascular disease, Ms. Sperling said in an interview. > >Montagu's wide-ranging career as a freelance commentator on nearly >everything human, along with his white hair, owlish glasses and pipe, made >him the public picture of the professor in the 1950s and 1960s. But despite >a voluminous production of scholarly works, he was unable to win tenure at >any of the universities where he taught, according to Ms. Sperling. That >slight was due, in part, to his ideas about the equality of the races and >the sexes, which were startling for their day, she said. > >Montagu wrote books on anthropology, human anatomy, intelligence, marriage, >why people cry and the history of swearing, as well as an account of John >Merrick, the severely disfigured man of Victorian England known as the >"Elephant Man." His commentary extended even to the prehistoric. He bristled >at the cartoon depiction of Neanderthal men as brutes who clubbed their >women over the head, and would dash off a scathing letter to the editor >whenever he read such a depiction, which he said ignored evidence of the >essential gentleness of Neanderthals. > > > > >Henrika Kuklick, a University of Pennsylvania professor of the sociology of >science, said Montagu was "someone who bridged the academic and the popular. >His works were both accessible and academically respectable." Ms. Kuklick, >author of "The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, >1885-1945" (Cambridge University Press, 1991), added that "as a public >intellectual, he ranks below Margaret Mead, but far above many others who I >won't name." > >Jonathan Marks, who teaches biological anthropology at the University of >California, noted that Montagu's interests included genetics and anatomy, a >range that would be nearly impossible in today's academia. > >"He and Max Levitan wrote a standard textbook on human genetics that was >used into the late 1970s, even though Montagu's original training was in >anatomy," said Marks. "It's as if you could write equally well about >architecture and the detailed mixing of concrete." > > > > >Montague Francis Ashley Montagu was born Israel Ehrenberg on June 28, 1905, >in the East End, or largely working-class section, of London. In previous >biographical articles, Montagu apparently said or made it known that he was >the son of a stockbroker in the City of London, the financial district, but >his father was really a tailor, a Polish-born Jew, and his mother a >Russian-born Jew, according to Ms. Sperling. Although an agnostic, Montagu >later acknowledged his Jewish heritage. He took his last name after Lady >Mary Montagu, an 18th century woman of letters and feminist, and the other >parts of his name after other writers he admired, Ms. Sperling said. > >"I don't know why exactly he changed his name," Ms. Sperling said. "He was >ambitious to do great things and as Israel, well, that would have been an >impediment in British academia." > >The classic autodidact, Montagu as a teenager puzzled his parents by >visiting London's used-book stores and buying second-hand copies of >challenging authors like Thomas Henry Huxley, the British biologist who >championed Darwin. At 15, he won a literary contest and selected William >McDougall's "Introduction to Social Psychology" as his prize. He was perhaps >the first undergraduate to study physical anthropology at the University of >London. > >He pursued his graduate studies at Columbia University in 1927, interrupting >his studies there to work in ethnology and anthropology in Italy and >physical anthropology at a medical museum in London. He got his Ph.D. from >Columbia in 1937 after studying under pioneers of anthropology like Franz >Boas. > >In 1953, he told an interviewer that the United States had had a profound >effect on him. "I was brought up a stuffed-shirt Englishman. I wasn't very >human. What America did for me was to humanize me. Democratize me, beginning >with the man who examined my luggage on the dock in 1927. He didn't call me >'sir' and I resented it." > >Montagu won his first fame in the 1940s by arguing that race was a social >construct, a product of perceptions about race, rather than a biological >fact. He was a principal drafter of a U.N. "Statement on Race" in 1949 that >incorporated these ideas. > >His most noticed work, however, was his 1953 book "The Natural Superiority >of Women," in which he argued that men were a form of "incomplete" woman and >that women were in many ways biologically superior. The attention and the >sales from the book allowed him to resign his teaching position at Rutgers >University in 1955. > >The controversy, in those prefeminist days, was enormous, but >nonthreatening. With his willingness to return reporters' telephone calls, >Montagu was widely quoted and therefore influential. His professorial manner >and dry wit made him a frequent guest on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny >Carson. > > > > >A television producer of the day captured his appeal. "All he does is play >himself -- a professor," Bob Herridge, a WCBS-TV producer, told an >interviewer. "He talks about stuff like early paleolithic culture and stone >artifacts of the upper Mesozoic period and you should see the fan mail! It's >fantastic!" > >In later years, he expanded his commentary to things like Ivy League dress. >"The Ivy League look in men's fashions is to be deplored on a number of >grounds, if not on the ground of taste itself," he wrote in 1958. > >Although an occasional pipe smoker at one point in his life, he opposed >tobacco in public places. If smoking cannot be banned on airplanes, smokers >should at least be segregated to the back of the plane, he wrote in 1971. >"It would be a simple act of civility and serve to increase the pleasure of >both nonsmokers and smokers -- the nonsmokers breathing relatively >unpolluted air and the smokers enjoying the pollution of others as well as >their own." > > > > >Montagu is survived by his wife, the former Marjorie Peakes, and three >children, Audrey Murphy of Sutton, Mass.; Barbara Johnstone of Princeton, >and Geoffrey Montagu of Los Angeles. He also had four grandchildren and two >great-grandchildren. > > > >================================================================ > >This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to > the mailing list . >To unsubscribe, E-mail to: