User:Lpara002/Tim D. White

Early Life

Born on August 24, 1950, in Los Angeles County, California, Timothy Douglas White grew up in Lake Arrowhead, a community of San Bernardino County. Growing up, White used to go to ancient Native American campsites in the neighboring San Bernardino Mountains, to gather obsidian flakes and pottery fragments. Although he was told that his dream of researching dinosaurs was unattainable by a high school guidance counselor, White's interest in prehistory never faded.

Education

Thanks to the guidance counselor's comment, White enrolled in University of California, Riverside as a biology major. However, he later on decided to major in anthropology as well. Later, the University of Michigan awarded White a Ph.D. in biological anthropology.

Career

Human evolution, in all of its dimensions, is one of White's key passions. His research focuses on gathering new data on early hominid skeletal, biology, environmental context, and behavior through fieldwork. Furthermore, White adopted phylogenetic and functional perspectives in order to study hominids from both the Pliocene and Pleistocene periods. He did fieldwork in Ethiopia and Turkey, as well as laboratory investigations in both countries and in Berkeley, which currently are ongoing.

In 1977, at University of California, Berkeley, White joined the Department of Anthropology. Eventually, he transferred to the Department of Integrative Biology at the same university. Today, White teaches human paleontology and human osteology classes. In general, he alternates in teaching these subjects each spring semester.

White is the director of the Human Evolution Research Center and co-director of the Middle Awash Research Project along with Berhane Asfaw, Yonas Beyene, and Giday WoldeGabriel.

Berhane Asfaw, William Henry Gilbert, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, and Gen Suwa are just a few of the paleo-anthropologists that White has taught and mentored.

White has been a member of the National Center for Science Education's Advisory Council since 2013. Also known as the NCSE, it is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to inform the press and the general public on the scientific and pedagogical aspects of the debates over evolution and climate change education. Furthermore, the NCSE also aims to provide information and tools to schools, parents, and other individuals striving to keep teaching those topics of science in public schools.

References

1. Friedrich, M. Jane (2021, December 23). Tim D. White. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tim-D-White