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Sherwood L. Washburn Award

Established in 1999, the Sherwood L. Washburn Award in Anthropology is an annual, merit-based award of $500 given to an undergraduate student majoring in anthropology. The winner is chosen by a panel of anthropology faculty who look for the paper or project that most clearly integrates and synthesizes topics across the breadth of anthropology, with preference given for those works that most closely reflect Professor Sherwood L. Washburn's scholarly contributions and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the human species.

Established by an anonymous donor, this prize honors the work of Sherwood L. Washburn, professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley. Much loved by his students, he was considered a brilliant teacher at both Columbia University and UC Berkeley. His wide-ranging contributions to anthropology are considered among the most salient and visionary of the 20th century. His work encompassed field observations of free-ranging primates in Asia and Africa, studies in human and animal anatomy, and laboratory experiments.

Sherwood L. Washburn with his former student, UCSC Professor of Anthropology Adrienne Zihlman, looking over a collection of primate bones that he donated to the Anthropology Department in 1989 and that is still used for teaching and research.

UC Santa Cruz is fortunate to have the gift of his collection of skeletal materials, which are a basis for classroom teaching in the Anthropology Department laboratories. A number of Washburn's papers have been reprinted in a volume dedicated to him: "The New Physical Anthropology: Science, Humanism, and Critical Reflection" 1999, published by Prentice Hall. Read more about Sherwood Washburn in the June 2001 issue of Physical Anthropology. [more]

For more information about this award, please contact the undergraduate advisor in the Anthropology Department at (831) 459-3320 or anthro_ugradadv@ucsc.edu or visit the department's website at http://anthro.ucsc.edu/

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View 2006 recipient.