Sherwood Washburn was born on November 26, 1911 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Henry Bradford Washburn and Edith (Hall) Washburn. His interest in the field of science quickly developed at an early age. As a child, he worked at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology on the weekends, because of the love he had for science. Heber Howe had a great influence on Washburn’s interests as a scientist during his high school years.
Washburn married Henrietta Pease on September 10, 1938, and they had two children, Sherwood and Stanley. Washburn began his post-high school years by attending Harvard University, the school which his father and brother also attended. Here he received his Bachelors Degree in Anthropology in 1935 Summa Cum Laude and a Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1940. As a graduate student he went on to take some unstructured courses, Comparative Anatomy and Vertebrate Paleontology, to gain wider knowledge. At the end of his first year of graduate school he began going on expeditions, including the Coolidge Asiatic Primate Expedition.
From 1939-1947, he was an Instructor and an Associate Professor of Anatomy at Columbia University. At the Columbia Medical School he had the opportunity to expand his research and do experiments that dealt specifically with traditional problems in human evolution and anthropology. From 1947-1958, he was an Associate Professor, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago; from 1953-55, he was the Department Chair. From 1958-1979, he was a Professor of Anthropology for the University of California, Berkley; from 1961-63, he was the Department Chair.
Sherwood Washburn had many major achievements throughout his career, some of which included writing The New Physical Anthropology [1951]. He was also involved in the Wenner-Gren Conferences with The Social Life of Early Man [1962] and Classification and Human Evolution [1963]. One of Washburn's major achievements was discovering how the brain grows. He found that there were two processes going on at the same time; part of the skull was growing at the sutures and the part of the skull that is closest to the brain was growing on the outside and then being reabsorbed on the inside.
He was also an editor of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology from 1955-57 and editor for Viking Publications in Anthropology from 1956-60. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, The American Anthropology Society, of which he was President in 1962, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, of which he was President from 1951-52, the American Association of Anatomists and the AAAS.
Sherwood Washburn's contributions to anthropology and his research of early hominids and hominoid development have brought about answers to questions previously unanswered. He became instrumental in his teaching of others, changing how students understand human beings. His many accomplishments have made a wide impact in the field of anthropology.
Devore, Irven "An Interview with Sherwood Washburn." Current Anthropology. 33 August-October 1992: 411-422.
Written by Students in an Introduction to Anthropology Class, Minnesota State University, Mankato, Minnesota
Edited by Marcy L. Voelker, 2007