Education
Lieberman was educated at Harvard University, where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
Lieberman was educated at Harvard University, where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
He is best known for his research on the evolution of the human head and the evolution of the human body. He also received a M. Philosophy from Cambridge University. He was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows and taught at Rutgers University and the George Washington University before becoming a professor at Harvard University in 2001.
He is the director of the Skeletal Biology Laboratory at Harvard University.
Honors and Lieberman studies how and why the human body is the way it is. His research combines paleontology, anatomy, physiology and experimental biomechanics in the lab and in the field
He has focused to a large extent on why and how humans have such unusual heads. He is also well known for his research on the evolution of human locomotion including whether the first hominins were bipeds, why bipedalism evolved, the biomechanical challenges of pregnancy in females, how locomotion affects skeletal function and, most especially, the evolution of running.
His 2004 paper with Dennis Bramble, “Endurance Running and the Evolution of the Genus Homo” proposed that humans evolved to run long distances to scavenge and hunt.
His research on running in general, especially barefoot running was popularized in Chris McDougall’s best-selling book Born to Run. Lieberman is an avid marathon runner, often barefoot, which has earned him the nickname, The Barefoot Professor.
National Merit Scholar, 1982 Phi Beta Kappa (Harvard College), 1986 Summa cum laude, Harvard College Frank Knox III Memorial Fellowship, 1986-1987 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, 1987-1990 Junior Fellowship, Harvard Society of Fellows, 1993-1996 IgNobel Prize in Physics, 2009 Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award, Harvard University, 2009 Harvard College Professorship, 2010-2015.
He is on the curatorial board of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, a member of the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, and the Scientific Executive Committee of the liberal studies.B. Leakey Foundation.
