John Russell Napier , MRCS , LRCP , D.Sc. (11 March 1917 ? 29 August 1987) was a British primatologist , paleoanthropologist , and physician , who is notable for his work with Homo habilis and OH 7 , ^[3] as well as on human and primate hands/feet. During his life he was widely considered a leading authority on primate taxonomy, ^{[2] [4]} but is perhaps most famous to the general public for his research on Bigfoot .

Biography [ edit ]

Napier was an orthopedic surgeon at the University of London before being invited by Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark to join him in his paleoanthropology research. ^[1] Napier then dedicated his life afterward to primatology, becoming the founder of the Primate Society of Great Britain, and was among the group, with Louis Leakey and Philip Tobias , that named Homo habilis in the 1960s. ^[5]

Napier later became Director of the Primate Biology Program at the Smithsonian Institution , where he examined the famous purported footage of Bigfoot , the Patterson?Gimlin film . After leaving the Smithsonian, Napier became a Visiting Professor of Primate Biology at Birkbeck College in London . He also served as President of Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire , England . ^[4] Napier was married to British primatologist Prudence Hero Napier (1916 ? 6 June 1997), the daughter of Sir Hugo Rutherford . ^[6]

Lectures [ edit ]

In 1970 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Monkeys Without Tails: A Giraffe's Eye-view of Man .

Bigfoot research [ edit ]

Napier was one of the first notable scientists to give serious attention to the Bigfoot/Sasquatch phenomenon. His investigations included interviewing amateur investigators and purported eyewitnesses, visiting alleged Bigfoot sighting areas, studying the scant physical evidence, and screening the 1967 Patterson?Gimlin film . Napier concluded the film was a clever hoax: "the scientific evidence taken collectively points to a hoax of some kind." ^{[ citation needed ]} However, by the same token, in reference to the Patterson?Gimlin film, Napier did also state on page 89 of his 1973 book 'Bigfoot: The Yeti And Sasquatch In Myth And Reality', "there was nothing in this film which would prove conclusively that this was a hoax."

In his 1973 book on the subject, Napier ultimately judged the evidence to be inconclusive: there was not enough hard proof to confirm to Napier that Bigfoot was a real creature. ^[7] However, Napier judged the indirect evidence – especially footprints – as compelling and intriguing enough to avoid dismissing the subject as entirely unworthy of serious study.

Institutions [ edit ]

• St Bartholomew's Hospital , Senior House Surgeon, Chief Assistant to the Orthopaedic Unit, Registrar of the Peripheral Nerve Injury Unit (1934?1946)
• University College London Medical School , Demonstrator in the Department of Anatomy (1944?1949)
• King's College London School of Medicine and Dentistry , Lecturer in Anatomy (1949?1967); Director of the Unit of Primatology and Human Evolution (1952?1967)
• Smithsonian Institution , Conservator of the Division of Mammals and Director of the Unit of Primatology and Human Evolution (1967?1969)
• Queen Elizabeth College , Director of the Program in Primate Biology (1969?1973)
• Birkbeck College , Visiting Professor of Primate Biology (1973?1978)

Selected bibliography [ edit ]

• A Handbook of Living Primates (New York: Academic Press, 1967, with Prudence Hero Napier)
• Old World Monkeys: Evolution, Systematics, and Behavior (New York: Academic Press, 1970, with Prudence Hero Napier)
• Roots of Mankind (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971)
• Bigfoot; The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality (New York: E P Dutton, 1973)
• Bigfoot (New York: Berkley Pub. Corp., 1974)
• Monkeys without Tails (New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1976)
• Primate Locomotion (London: Oxford University Press, 1976)
• Primates and Their Adaptations (Burlington, NC: Scientific Publications Division, Carolina Biological Supply Co., 1977.)
• Hands (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980)
• The Natural History of the Primates (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988, with Prudence Hero Napier)

References [ edit ]

External links [ edit ]

• NY Times review of Napier's book "Hands"