Sir Arthur Keith

Sir Arthur Keith, detail of a pencil drawing by William Rothenstein, 1928; in the National Portrait Gallery, LondonCourtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

Sir Arthur Keith,  (born February 5, 1866Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland—died January 7, 1955, Downe, Kent, England), Scottish anatomist and physical anthropologist who specialized in the study of fossil humans and who reconstructed early hominin forms, notably fossils from Europe and North Africa and important skeletal groups from Mount Carmel (now in Israel).

A doctor of medicine, science, and law, Keith became a professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1908), was professor of physiology at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1918–23), and was rector of the University of Aberdeen (1930–33). His major works include The Antiquity of Man (1915), Concerning Man’s Origin (1927), and A New Theory of Human Evolution (1948). In his writings on human evolution, Keith tended to emphasize the competitive factor and interpreted racial and national prejudice as inborn. He was knighted in 1921.