- Vincent Sarich
Vincent M. Sarich (born
1934 ) is an Americananthropology professor.Born in
Chicago , he received a bachelor of science inchemistry fromIllinois Institute of Technology and his masters and doctorate in anthropology fromUniversity of California, Berkeley . He was a member of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford from1967 to1981 , and taught at UC Berkeley from1966 through1994 .Along with his PhD supervisor
Allan Wilson , Sarich measured the strength of immunological cross-reactions of blood serumalbumin between pairs of creatures, including humans and African Apes (chimpanzee s andgorilla s). The strength of the reaction could be expressed numerically as anImmunological Distance , which was in turn proportional to the number ofamino acid differences between homologous proteins in different species. By constructing a calibration curve of the ID of species' pairs with known divergence times in thefossil record, the data could be used as a "molecular clock " to estimate the times of divergence of pairs with poorer or unknown fossil records. In 1967, Sarich and Wilson published a seminal paper in "Science " that estimated the divergence time of humans and apes as 4 to 5 million years ago, at a time when standard interpretations of the fossil record gave this divergence as at least 10 to as much as 30 million years. Subsequent fossil discoveries, notably "Lucy ", and reinterpretation of older fossil materials, notablyRamapithecus , showed the younger estimates to be correct and validated the albumin method. Application of themolecular clock principle revolutionized the study ofmolecular evolution .Sarich's later work on race strengthened his reputation as a controversial figure. He applied his earlier work to racial differentiation, which he sees as the beginnings of
speciation , arguing that the smaller the amount of time required to create a given number of morphological difference, the more selectively significant the differences become.Sarich is a major proponent of
sociobiology ,evolutionary psychology , and the idea that racial differences represent the beginnings of speciation, which often caused him to be the subject of controversy by left-wing activists at Berkeley [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3D9143BF930A15751C1A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all Campus Is Split Over Statements By a Professor] The New York Times, December 23, 1990. Retrieved 9 March 2008.] .In
1994 , Sarich was a signatory of a collective statement titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence ", written byLinda Gottfredson and published in the "Wall Street Journal ". Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994).Mainstream Science on Intelligence . "Wall Street Journal ", p A18.] Sarich also wrote a favorable review of "The Bell Curve ".He currently lectures in anthropology at the
University of Auckland , New Zealand.elected publications
*Sarich VM, Wilson AC. Immunological time scale for hominid evolution. "Science" 158, 1967, p. 1200-1203.
*Sarich VM, Miele F. "." Westview Press (2004). ISBN 0-8133-4086-1
*Sarich VM. The Final Taboo. "Skeptic" (Altadena, CA) January 1, 2000. Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Page: 38
*Sarich VM, Dolhinow P. "Background for man; readings in physical anthropology" ASIN: B00005VHM2
*Zihlman, Adrienne L. , John E. Cronin, Douglas L. Cramer, and Vincent M. Sarich. (1978). Pygmy chimpanzee as a possible prototype for the common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. Nature 275: 744-746.
*Zihlman, L., John E. Cronin, D.L. Cramer, and Vincent M. Sarich, Pygmy Chimpanzee as a Possible Prototype for Common Ancestor of Humans, Chimpanzees and Gorillas. Nature.
*Marks, Jon, Carl W. Schmid, and Vincent M. Sarich, (1988). DNA hybridization as a guide to phylogeny: Relations of the Hominoidea. Journal of Human Evolution, 17: 769-786.References
External links
* [http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/sarich_vincent.html Vincent Sarich biography] by Kozue Takahashi via
Minnesota State University
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