George MacCurdy was born in Warrensburg Missouri to William and Margaret MacCurdy on April 17, 1863. In 1889, after visiting Boston and Cambridge, George was determined to go to Harvard University. He attended Harvard with an interest in biology and geology. Two years later, in 1893, he received his A.B. and a year later received his M.A. During a trip to Vienna, George attended the International Zoological Congress. The conference was where Eugene DuBois first showed off the remains of pithecanthropus erectus, this sparked George's interest.
In 1898, George was offered an instructing position at Yale University. While he was at Yale, he formed the Anthropology Division of the Peabody Museum in 1902. Since the time of its opening it has grown to 260,000 catalogued lots by donations of Yale's alumni, friends, faculty, and students. The collections are now held by four faculty members, Richard Burger, Andrew Hill, Frank Hole, and Alison Richard, who are apart of the University's Department of Anthropology. George Maccurdy eventually earned his Ph.D and became a professor of prehistoric archeology at Yale.
In the summer of 1919 George married Glenn Barlett; she also had interest in prehistoric archeology and encouraged George to further his work. In 1921, George and Glenn founded the American School in France for prehistoric studies. Two books George helped publish were a volume set called Human Origins and another volume called Early Man. Other accomplishments of George Maccurdy included being Vice President of the Archeological Institute of Anthropology and a Trustee of the Laboratory of Anthropology.
References:
http://search.biography.com/print_record.pl?id=17720 visited Feb. 25 2003
www.peabody.yale.edu/collections/ant/ visited Feb. 24 2003
www.aaanet.org/gad/history/087maccurdy.pdf visited Feb. 24 2003
Written by Matthew Kosel
Edited by Marcy L. Voelker, 2007