Irven DeVore

Irven DeVore (October 7, 1934 – September 23, 2014) was an anthropologist and evolutionary biologist, and Curator of Primatology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He headed Harvard's Department of Anthropology from 1987 to 1992. He taught generations of students at Harvard both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He mentored many young scientists who went on to prominence in anthropology and behavioral biology, including Richard Lee, Robert Trivers, Sarah Hrdy, Peter Ellison, Barbara Smuts, Patricia Draper, Henry Harpending, Marjorie Shostak, Robert Bailey, Nadine Peacock, John Tooby, Richard Wrangham, Terrence Deacon, Steven Gaulin, and others.

DeVore was doing field research on the behavior and ecology of baboons in 1959, at the same time Jane Goodall was doing her research on chimpanzees and Robert Ardrey was writing African Genesis (1961), a book that DeVore used to use as an example of how not to explain human evolution scientifically. DeVore's own mentor was Sherwood Washburn, a distinguished physical anthropologist and primatologist whom DeVore followed from the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 1962, to the University of California at Berkeley, where he held a coveted Miller Fellowship. Under Washburn's wing, he carried out pioneering studies of baboon behavior and ecology, and in 1965 published a collection of research chapters on various primates, a volume under DeVore's editorship that helped define the field of behavioral primatology. His many field trips to the baboons were a natural focus for a young man who, growing up in and around Joy, Texas, had steeped himself in nature. Throughout life he was known for delightedly adopting odd pets, and his trips to Africa put him back in touch with the natural world he had loved since childhood.

However, by the mid-'60s he had turned his attention to human primates, through his collaboration with Richard B. Lee. Together they organized (despite their youth) a stellar international conference called "Man the Hunter," which included Claude Lévi-Strauss in cultural anthropology, Lewis Binford in archeology, and many other luminaries in disciplines relevant to hunter-gatherer studies, a sub-field Lee and DeVore helped create. The conference led to a landmark book in 1968; although the title seemed anachronistic within a few years, the book posited that women were the main breadwinners in that type of society.

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