Richard Wrangham

Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University where he has worked since 1989. His major interests are chimpanzee behavioral ecology, the evolution of violence and tolerance, human dietary adaptation, and the conservation of chimpanzees and other apes. He has studied chimpanzees in Uganda since 1987 as director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project (now co-Director with Martin Muller).

He received his Ph.D. in Zoology from Cambridge University in 1975, and was a Research Fellow at King’s College (Cambridge) from 1977 to 1980. In 1981 he joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). He has authored more than 200 publications, including (with Dale Peterson) Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. He has been Co-Chair, with Professor Toshisada Nishida, of the Great Ape World Heritage Species Project, President (2004-2008) of the International Primatological Society, and Patron of UNEP/UNESCO’s Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP).

Wrangham was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1987, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His most recent book is Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Profile Books, June 2009)

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