In 1884, Keith enrolled in the Marischal College of the University of Aberdeen and graduated with a Bachelor degree in Medicine in 1888.
Gallery of Arthur Keith
University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland
In 1892, Keith pursued studies in anatomy at the University of Aberdeen. In 1894, he graduated with the Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Aberdeen with the thesis titled The Myology of the Catarrhini: A Study in Evolution.
Gallery of Arthur Keith
University College London, London, England
In 1892, Keith pursued studies in anatomy at the University College London.
Career
Gallery of Arthur Keith
1939
Keith in 1939.
Gallery of Arthur Keith
A photo of Keith.
Gallery of Arthur Keith
A photo of Keith.
Gallery of Arthur Keith
A photo of Keith.
Achievements
Membership
Royal Society
1913
Royal Society, London, England
Keith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1913.
Anatomical Society
1918 - 1920
Keith served for two years a president of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1918.
United States National Academy of Sciences
United States National Academy of Sciences, Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Keith was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
In 1892, Keith pursued studies in anatomy at the University of Aberdeen. In 1894, he graduated with the Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Aberdeen with the thesis titled The Myology of the Catarrhini: A Study in Evolution.
Arthur Keith was a British anatomist and physical anthropologist. He specialized in the study of human evolution and reconstructed early hominin forms, notably fossils from Europe and North Africa and important skeletal groups from Mount Carmel.
Background
Arthur Keith was born on February 5, 1866, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was the fourth of ten children of John Keith, a small farmer, and Jessie Macpherson.
As a child, Keith was influenced by the of naturalist Charles Darwin’s book "Origin of Species" and he decided that he would pursue his career in the field of medical science.
Education
In 1884, Keith enrolled in the Marischal College of the University of Aberdeen and graduated with a Bachelor degree in Medicine in 1888. While at the university he was guided by renowned botanist James Trail and anatomist John Struthers.
In 1892, he pursued studies in anatomy at the University of Aberdeen and the University College London. In 1893, while at the University of Aberdeen, he earned his first award, the Struthers Prize, for his demonstration of ligaments in humans and other apes.
In 1894, he graduated with the Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Aberdeen with the thesis titled The Myology of the Catarrhini: A Study in Evolution.
Keith was appointed senior demonstrator of anatomy at the London Hospital in 1895 and became head of the department in 1899. He was an excellent teacher and inspired many students to research. He edited two anatomy textbooks and also wrote his successful Human Embryology and Morphology (1902). He made an extensive research on malformations, particularly those of the heart, on which he was helped by James Mackenzie; and with his pupil Martin Flack he first described in 1906 the sinoatrial node, or pacemaker, of the heart. This observation was of much value to cardiology, especially when heart surgery was developed forty years later. Keith resigned from the hospital in 1908 to become conservator of the Royal College of Surgeons Museum, where a vast and somewhat heterogeneous medical collection had grown round the nucleus of John Hunter’s museum of comparative anatomy and pathology. He revived the scientific side of the college's work, gave stimulating demonstration-lectures, and encouraged surgeons and anatomists to use the museum; but there were then no students at the college and little facility for research.
Keith’s interest now reverted to anthropology. He had studied primate skulls in 1895 and had published An Introduction to the Study of Anthropoid Apes (London, 1897); he had also written a monograph, Man and Ape, which his publisher refused in 1900. In 1911 he published in London a short book, Ancient Types of Man, on the theme that the modern type was as old as the extinct primitive types. He followed this with The Antiquity of Man (1915), an anatomical survey of all important human fossil remains, which urged the same theme; he enlarged it in 1925 but “with diminishing conviction.” In New Discoveries (1931), Keith admitted that evidence really suggested that modern races arose from types already separate in the early Pleistocene. Between 1919 and 1939, when he completed his study of the Palestinian Stone Age remains, he published many reports on human fossils and became the principal arbiter in discussing them.
Keith believed that it was a curator’s first duty to make the resources of his museum available to research workers and that a scientist ought to awaken the public to the message of his work and ideas. He thus became a successful popularizer in the tradition of Huxley and published two semipopular books in 1919.
In conjunction with his Eurocentric view on human evolution in Europe as being separate from Africa, Keith shared scientific racist views with a number of other intellectuals and writers during the 1920s, often based on Galtonism and the belief that opposition to cross-breeding in animals could be applied to miscegenation. In 1931, with John Walter Gregory, he delivered the annual Conway Hall lecture entitled Race as a Political Factor. The lecture contained as its abstract: The three primary racial groups within the human species are the Caucasian, mongoloid and negroid. From analogy with cross-breeding in animals and plants, and from experience of human cross-breeding, it can be asserted that intermarriage between members of the three groups produces inferior progeny. Hence racial segregation is to be recommended. However, the different races can still assist and co-operate with, each other, in the interests of peace and harmony.
Quotations:
"Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable."
"The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but what takes place in our hearts."
"We shall never understand the ethical system taught by Jesus unless we realize that he was a Jew, not only by birth, but that he lived and taught as a Jew; the Sermon on the Mount was addressed to his distracted fellow nationals."
"The discovery of agriculture was the first big step toward a civilized life."
"Human nature, as manifested in tribalism and nationalism, provides the momentum of the machinery of human evolution."
"Tribal life comes automatically to an end when primitive people begin to live in a town or a city, for sooner or later a tribal organization is found to be incompatible with life in a city."
"Civilization never stands still; if in one country it is falling back, in another it is changing, evolving, becoming more complicated, bringing a fresh experience to body and mind, breeding new desires, and exploiting Nature's cupboard for their satisfaction."
"As long as man remains an inquiring animal, there can never be a complete unanimity in our fundamental beliefs. The more diverse our paths, the greater is likely to be the divergence of beliefs."
Membership
Keith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1913. He served for two years a president of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1918. He was also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
Royal Society
,
England
1913
Anatomical Society
,
United Kingdom
1918 - 1920
United States National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
Connections
In 1899 Keith married Cecilia Caroline Gray. They had no children.