Nina Jablonski, 2010 WINGS Elected Fellow

"Don't work for recognition. Do the work you love to the best of your ability and recognition will flow naturally to you." — Nina Jablonski

Anthropologist, Paleontologist, University Professor

Born: 1953-01-01

Hometown: Buffalo, NY

Education: PhD in Anthropology

Achievements

Discoveries: The first fossil chimpanzee, found in a collection of monkey fossils in a museum

Expeditions: Paleontological field expeditions to China, Nepal, Pakistan, Kenya, and Tanzania

Biography

Nina G. Jablonski is a biological anthropologist and paleobiologist who conducts research on the evolution of adaptations to the environment in humans and our close primate relatives. She is currently Head and Professor of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University. Jablonski's research combines field paleontology with detailed study of fossils in the laboratory, and theoretical work aimed at understanding why some animals survive under changing environmental conditions and others don't. She is fascinated by problems of evolution that do not have immediate answers in the fossil record. Pursuing studies of the "unseen" aspects of human evolution, most notably, the evolution of human skin and skin color, and the evolution of human communication have absorbed increasing amounts of her time in the last 15 years. Her fieldwork and laboratory studies in paleontology have involved long-term collaborations with scientists in east and south Asia, and in eastern Africa. She conducts at least one season of fieldwork every year, most regularly in southwestern China. Jablonski is a Joint Editor of the Cambridge Series in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology and an Associate Editor of Folia Primatologica. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the California Academy of Sciences, an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the Advisory Council for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation. In April 2005, she was awarded one of first twelve Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowships ("Guggenheims for race") for her research on the evolution of human skin color. She was awarded the W.W. Howells Book Award of the American Anthropological Association for 2007 for her book, Skin: A Natural History (University of California Press, 2006). In 2009 she was elected to membership of the American Philosophical Society.

Fun Facts

Favorite Item to have in the field: Clean drinking water

Heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Publications

Skin: A Natural History