World-renowned scientist Phillip Tobias dies
He regarded his students as his children
DURING his life, palaeo-anthropologist Phillip Tobias changed humans’ understanding of our ancient ancestry.
Born in Durban between the two world wars – on October 14, 1925 – he died in Joburg at Wits University Donald Gordon Medical Centre yesterday after a three-month illness, said Gauteng Tourism Authority spokesman Anthony Paton.
Tobias, who was nominated for a Nobel prize three times, decided at the age of 15 to study medicine after his sister, Val, died of diabetes at the aged of 21.
He had asked the family doctor why his sister and his mother’s mother had the disease, but he and his mother did not.
The reply was that there was no one in South Africa suitably qualified in genetics to answer the question.
Tobias enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Medical School in 1944, later branching into genetics.
“I decided I’d be the first one (to answer his boyhood question)... and I was,” he said in an interview in 1996. He later wrote an acclaimed thesis on genetics.
Anger at his sister’s death may have begun Tobias’s study of humans, but love for human-kind brought him to spend a lifetime studying its history.
One of his most famous palaeo-anthropological finds was Little Foot – four 4.17 million-year-old foot bones unearthed at Sterkfontein by Dr Ron Clarke.
Later more of the skeleton was unearthed, making Little Foot our oldest, most complete skeleton of a direct ancestor, Tobias explained in 2003, when a new dating technique showed the bones to be considerably older than the first estimate of 3.3 million years.
While Tobias, then 19, was studying genetics under Professor Raymond Dart – famous for his discovery of what became known as the Taung Skull in 1924 – and Professor Joe Gillman, he “fell under the spell” of palaeontology.
Dart’s theory, now accepted, initially shocked scientists across the globe.
The skull is now seen as belonging to a child of the humanoid Australopithecus Africanus genus.
This was a new species, a new link in the chain that ends with modern humankind – Homo sapiens.
Tobias, who was the only person to hold three professorships simultaneously at Wits, in 2002 hosted his own, popular TV series, Tobias’s Bodies.
The series, presented and narrated by Tobias, consisted of six stand-alone episodes exploring different themes about genetics, anatomy and primatology.
Tobias had great love for the palaeontological digs at the Sterkfontein Caves, outside Krugersdorp in Gauteng, where he led a team of researchers.
He participated in almost all the other major digs in southern Africa since 1945, and discovered some 25 archaeological sites in Botswana while on the French Panhard-Capricorn Expedition.
He also successfully campaigned for the Sterkfontein Caves to be proclaimed a World Heritage site.
Tobias was instrumental in the process to have the remains of Saartjie Baartman returned to South Africa. He led negotiations with France on behalf of the South African government.
The remains of the Khoi woman, which were exhibited in Paris as ethnological and sexual curiosities in the 19th century, finally returned home in May 2002.
Tobias was appointed demonstrator in histology and instructor in physiology at Wits in 1945. He received his Bachelor of Science degrees in histology and physiology in 1946-47, graduated in medicine (MB, BCh) in 1950 and received his PhD in 1953.
In 1967 he was awarded a Doctorate in Science for his published work on hominid evolution.
He established the Institute for the Study of Man in Africa in 1956 to advance the study of human ancestry and evolution, heredity and genetic composition and bodily structure in Africa.
In 1959 he became professor and head of the department of anatomy, a position that he held until 1993, after which he became professor emeritus and head of the research department at the Sterkfontein Caves.
Tobias was appointed honorary professor of palaeoanthropology at the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research in 1977 and honorary professor in zoology in 1981.
In 2006 Tobias’s autobiography Into the Past, which documented his first 40 years, was published. Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner, who wrote the foreword to the book, said it “not only records Phillip Tobias’s personal journey in life, science and education, but also the passage of our country, South Africa”.
Tobias, who never married or had children, said he regarded his students, numbering in the region of 10 000 during his career, as being “in some way” his children.
“I like to believe that I have given something valuable to every one of them,” he said.
Tobias received many awards and honours, including honorary degrees from the universities of Pennsylvania, Cambridge, California, Natal, Cape Town, Unisa, DurbanWestville, Western Ontario, Alta, Guelph and Wits. – Sapa