Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (May 11, 1752 - January 22, 1840) was a German physiologist and anthropologist.

Born at Gotha, he studied medicine at Jena, graduated in 1775 and was appointed extraordinary professor of medicine in Göttingen in 1776 and ordinary professor in 1778. He was the author of Institutiones Physiologicae (1787), and of a Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie (1804), both of which were very popular and went through many editions, but he is best known for his work in connexion with anthropology, of which science he has been justly called the founder.

Blumenbach was the first to show the value of comparative anatomy in the study of man's history, and his craniometrical researches justified his division of the human race into several great varieties or families, of which he enumerated five: the Caucasian or white race, the Mongolian or yellow, the Malayan or brown race, the Negro or black race, and the American or red race. This classification has been very generally received, and most later schemes have been. modifications of it.

His most important anthropological work was his description of sixty human crania published originally in fasciculi under the title Collectionis suae craniorum diversarum gentium illustratae decades (Göttingen, 1790-1828).

Blumenbach died at Göttingen.

Warning: This text has been taken from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. It needs to be expanded, clarified, and updated.