Robert Broom FRS FRSE (30 November 1866 6 April 1951) was a British-South African medical doctor and palaeontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University of Glasgow.

From 1903 to 1910, he was professor of zoology and geology at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, South Africa, and subsequently he became keeper of vertebrate palaeontology at the South African Museum, Cape Town.

Life

Broom was born at 66 Back Sneddon Street in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, the son of John Broom, a designer of calico prints and Paisley shawls, and Agnes Hunter Shearer.

In 1893, he married Mary Baird Baillie, his childhood sweetheart.

In his medical studies at the University of Glasgow Broom specialised in obstetrics. just prior to the South African War. From 1903 to 1910, he was professor of Zoology and Geology at Victoria College, Stellenbosch (later Stellenbosch University), but was forced out of this position for promoting belief in evolution. After Raymond Dart's discovery of the Taung Child, an infant australopithecine, Broom's interest in palaeoanthropology was heightened. Broom's career seemed over and he was sinking into poverty, when Dart wrote to Jan Smuts about the situation. Smuts, exerting pressure on the South African government, managed to obtain a position for Broom in 1934 with the staff of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria as an Assistant in Palaeontology.

Broom has been described as "one of the great Karoo (and, in particular, therapsid) palaeontologists", having managed to describe 369 therapsid holotypes in his lifetime, which he ascribed to 168 new genera. Broom has a reputation as a "splitter" that has resulted in only around 57% of his holotypes still being considered valid as of 2003.

In the following years, he and John T. Robinson made a series of spectacular finds, including fragments from six hominins in Sterkfontein, which they named Plesianthropus transvaalensis, popularly called Mrs. Ples, but which was later classified as an adult Australopithecus africanus, as well as more discoveries at sites in Kromdraai and Swartkrans. In 1937, Broom made his most famous discovery, by defining the robust hominin genus Paranthropus with his discovery of Paranthropus robustus. These discoveries helped support Dart's claims for the Taung species.

For his volume, The South Africa Fossil Ape-Men, The Australopithecinae, in which he proposed the Australopithecinae subfamily, Broom was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1946.

The remainder of Broom's career was devoted to the exploration of these sites and the interpretation of the many early hominin remains discovered there. He continued to write to the last. Shortly before his death he finished a monograph on the Australopithecines and remarked to his nephew:<br />

::"Now that's finished ... and so am I."

Spiritual evolution

Broom was a nonconformist and was deeply interested in the paranormal and spiritualism; he was a critic of Darwinism and materialism. Broom was a believer in spiritual evolution. In his book The Coming of Man: Was it Accident or Design? (1933) he claimed that "spiritual agencies" had guided evolution as animals and plants were too complex to have arisen by chance. According to Broom, there were at least two different kinds of spiritual forces, and psychics are capable of seeing them. Broom claimed there was a plan and purpose in evolution and that the origin of Homo sapiens is the ultimate purpose behind evolution. According to Broom "Much of evolution looks as if it had been planned to result in man, and in other animals and plants to make the world a suitable place for him to dwell in."

After discovering the skull of Mrs. Ples, Broom was asked if he excavated at random, Broom replied that spirits had told him where to find his discoveries.

Khoisan and "race science"

Broom had a noted interest in the Khoisan peoples, which included collecting their remains, including those of the recently deceased, as well as by digging up old graves. Broom first began collecting modern human remains in 1897, shortly after he moved to South Africa. In that year he collected the remains of three elderly "Hottentot" people that had died around Port Nolloth following a drought in the region. Broom stated that he "cut their heads off and boiled them in paraffin tins on the kitchen stove". Their skulls were later sent to the medical school of the University of Edinburgh, alongside a 7 month old foetus, from which Broom had removed the brain which he preserved separately. the Triassic archosauromorph reptile Prolacerta broomi, the rhinesuchid amphibian Broomistega, the Permian dicynodont Robertia broomiana and millerettid Broomia and the aloe plant species Aloe broomii.

See also

  • List of fossil sites (with link directory)
  • List of hominina fossils (with images)
  • Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research
  • John Talbot Robinson, co-discoverer of Mrs Ples.
  • PanAfrican Archaeological Association

Notes and references

  • Biographies: Robert Broom, TalkOrigins Archive
  • Robert Broom: A Short Bibliography of his Evolutionary Works, MPRInstitute.org site.
  • British metaphysics as reflected in Robert Broom's evolutionary theory, translation of an article by Václav Petr published in Bulletin of the Czech Geological Survey, 75(1): 73–85. Praha 2000. Text and photos displayed entire at the MPRInstitute.org site.