Biography
He was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Henry Bradford Washburn, Sr., dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, and Edith Buckingham Hall. He was the younger brother of Henry Bradford Washburn. In his youth, Washburn took a keen interest in the field of natural history, and during school vacations worked with exhibits and collections in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Washburn graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a Bachelors Degree in Anthropology in 1935, followed by a Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1940. For a time, Washburn considered pursuing his doctorate in zoology, and in his first year in graduate school, worked as an assistant with a zoological expedition in southern Asia called the Asiatic Primate Expedition. His work as a graduate student in comparative anatomy, comparative psychology, animal locomotion mechanics, and paleontology helped shape in him a multi-disciplinary perspective toward the study of evolutionary origins.
Washburn married Henrietta Pease in 1938, and they had two children, Sherwood "Tuck" and Stan. They subsequently resided in New York, Chicago, Illinois and Berkeley, California, where Sherwood held university positions. Washburn died in Berkeley in 2000 at age 88.
Read more about this topic: Sherwood Washburn
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)