Phillip Vallentine Tobias
Rrofessor Phillip Vallentine Tobias was born on the 14/10/1925 in Durban South Africa.He first received his B.Sc.(Hons) in Histology and Physiology in 1946-1947. Hethan graduated in Medicine, MBBch degree from the university oF witwatersrand. e was appointed as a lecturer in anatomy in 1951. In 1953 he received his Ph.D. for a thesis entitled Chromosomes, Sex-Cells, and Evolution in the Gerbil. In 1955 he started his post-graduate research at Cambridge University, England,where he filled the position of Nuffield Dominion Senior Traveling Fellow in physical anthropology.In 1956 at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Chicago he was the Rockefeller Traveling Fellow in anthropology, human genetics, and dental anatomy and growth.In 1959 he became Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy and Human Biology, succeeding his mentor and eminent scholar, Professor Raymond Dart.. In 1967 he was awarded a D.Sc. in palaeoanthropology for his work on hominid evolution. During this period he attended the University of the Witwatersrand. He was Dean of Medicine from 1980 to 1982. He was appointed Honorary Professor of Palaeoanthropology at the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research in 1977 and Honorary Professor in Zoology in 1981.Tobias has excavated at the Sterkfontein caves and worked at almost all other major sites in Southern Africa since 1945. He has also opened some 25 archaeological sites in Botswana while on the French Panhard-Capricorn Expedition while conducting a biological survey of the Tonga People of Zimbabwe. He was one of the anthropologists instrumental in unmasking the Piltdown fraud.
