B aker, P aul T

Abstract

Paul T. Baker (1927–2007) was a leader in transforming biological anthropology and human biology from descriptive endeavors to a comparative biology of humans on the basis of evolutionary principles. He was a Professor of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University from 1958 to 1996, where his major scientific interest was how human biological and physiological variation is structured by responses to environmental and sociocultural stressors. Exploring responses to climatic and social stressors at the population level, early in his career Baker integrated ecological and evolutionary theory and later defined the subdiscipline of human population biology as a transdisciplinary science with the goal of understanding how human variation is patterned in modern populations. On the basis of his multiple contributions to elucidating genetic, environmental, and sociocultural inputs to human variability in health, physical function, and longevity and his leadership in multiple transdisciplinary research projects, including the International Biological Programme, in 1980 Baker was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.