Arboreal Man

x, 230, [12] pp. 8vo. Green cloth, gilt titles, gilt illustration on front board. 81 woodcut illustrations. The author was known for his Tarsian Hypothesis of evolution, which posited a more distant common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and men (the tarsier). Bibliography and index follow text. "Jones, (Frederic) Wood (1879–1954), anatomist, was born on 23 January 1879 at West Hackney, London, the youngest of the three children of Charles Henry Jones, architect, of Welsh descent, and his wife, Lucy Allin. He entered the London Hospital in 1897 as a medical student and qualified MB, BS in 1904. While a student he contributed to the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, and won a succession of prizes in anatomy, physiology, and clinical medicine. He was throughout life active and restless, and did not retain any of his academic posts (including six chairs of anatomy) for more than a few years. This adventurous spirit was first shown when in 1905 he became medical officer to the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company in the Cocos Islands. He stayed for fifteen months and made an important study of reef-building corals, the results of which appeared in Coral and Atolls (1910). In 1907 he returned to England to take up the post of demonstrator in anatomy at the London Hospital under Arthur Keith, but soon afterwards he left for Egypt to undertake field anthropological studies on behalf of the Egyptian government's archaeological survey of Nubia. Jones returned to England in 1909 to become lecturer in anatomy at Manchester University, and a year later he went to St Thomas's Hospital medical school as senior demonstrator in anatomy. In this year also, he was awarded the DSc degree of London University. In 1910 Jones married Gertrude (d. 1957), daughter of George Clunies Ross. They had no children. There were, however, five children of her previous marriage to Axel Wilhelm Blom, whom Gertrude had divorced. In 1912 Jones transferred to the London School of Medicine for Women, first as director and then as professor of anatomy. In 1915 he delivered the Arris and Gale lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons, entitled 'The influence of the arboreal habit in the evolution of the reproductive system', proving a lecturer of unusual ability, with an original approach to the evidence of comparative anatomy in human evolution. He amplified his lectures in Arboreal Man (1916). Later, he expounded the view that there is no close relationship between humans on the one hand and apes and monkeys on the other, but that the segregation of the evolutionary line leading to humans occurred as far back as the Eocene period. This thesis met with considerable criticism from other comparative anatomists. During the First World War, Jones was a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was stationed at the Military Orthopaedic Hospital at Shepherd's Bush. He made some useful observations on the effects of partial paralysis of limbs following gunshot wounds, and in 1920 he published one of his best and most widely read books, The Principles of Anatomy as Seen in the Hand. In 1919 Jones went to Australia as professor of anatomy at Adelaide University, where he remained for eight years and engaged largely in field studies, taking part in several expeditions in South Australia. On these expeditions extensive zoological, botanical, and anthropological collections were made, some of which led to the discovery of new marsupial species as well as many new species of invertebrates. The results were published in the Records of the South Australia Museum and the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. Between 1923 and 1925 he published a systematic catalogue of the mammals of South Australia—probably his most important work on comparative anatomy with 311 illustrations, drawn by himself. In 1927 Jones accepted the Rockefeller chair of physical anthropology in the University of Hawaii, where he remained for two years. During this time he published a general systematic account of the comparative anatomy of the primates in Man's Place among the Mammals (1929), in which he expounded in detail his unorthodox view of the relationship of humans to the higher primates. In 1930 he returned to Australia to take the chair of anatomy at Melbourne University, and during the next few years he took part in further zoological and anthropological expeditions, and completed papers on strictly anatomical subjects. At the end of 1937 he left Australia to take up the professorship of anatomy at Manchester University, where he continued to publish papers on anatomical subjects, as well as editing the seventh edition of Buchanan's Manual of Anatomy (1946). His stimulating book, Structure and Function as Seen in the Foot (1944), was a work of considerable value for orthopaedic surgeons. His biological essays, Design and Purpose (1942), Habit and Heritage (1943), and Trends of Life (1953), affirmed his modified Lamarckian interpretation of evolution and expressed strongly anti-Darwinian views. In 1945 Jones assumed his last academic office, that of the Sir William H. Collins professor of human and comparative anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, which he held until 1949. Thereafter he served as curator of the Hunterian collection of the college and was a Hunterian trustee. He had been elected to the fellowship of the college in 1930. Jones died of lung cancer at his London home, 20 Marsham Court, Westminster, on 29 September 1954, his wife surviving him. He was remembered for his vigorous personality, his strictly scientific contributions, and for the healthy stimulus he gave to controversy by the occasional unorthodoxy of his opinions. His reputation as a lecturer brought him many requests to deliver memorial lectures and orations. He was elected FRS in 1925 and received the honorary degree of DSc from Adelaide (1920) and Melbourne (1934)." - Oxford Dictionary of National Biography