Robert Broom
| Robert Broom | |
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| Born | 30 November 1866 |
| Died | 6 April 1951 (aged 84) |
| Awards |
Royal Medal (1928) Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1946) Wollaston Medal (1949) |
| Signature | |
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Robert Broom FRSFRSE (30 November 1866, Paisley – 6 April 1951) was a Scottish South African doctor and paleontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University of Glasgow.
From 1903 to 1910 he was professor of zoology and geology at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, South Africa, and subsequently he became keeper of vertebrate paleontology at the South African Museum, Cape Town.
He was born at 66 Back Sneddon Street in Paisley, the son of John Broom, a designer of calico prints and Paisley shawls, and Agnes Hunter Shearer.
In 1893 he married Mary Baird Baillie.
He died in Pretoria in South Africa.
Broom was first known for his study of mammal-like reptiles. After Raymond Dart's discovery of the Taung Child, an infant australopithecine, Broom's interest in paleoanthropology was heightened. Broom's career seemed over and he was sinking into poverty, when Dart wrote to Jan Smuts about the situation. Smuts, exerting pressure on the South African government, managed to obtain a position for Broom in 1934 with the staff of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria as an Assistant in Palaeontology.
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