Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the Emergence of Scientific Anthropology. Frequently cited in the literature as the ‘Father of Scientific Anthropology’, the comparative anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach played a formative role in establishing anthropology as a scientific discipline in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Formally a professor of medicine at the University of Göttingen in the German Duchy of Hannover, his career as an academic spanned a remarkably long and productive six decades between 1776 to his retirement in 1835. It was a time that witnessed anthropology’s rise from the Enlightenment’s humanistic and philosophical orientation in the study of man to a more directed scientific approach in establishing it as a separate branch of study. In the German-speaking lands in particular, a concerted effort among a relatively large and varied group of thinkers emerged to ground the study of man on firmer scientific principles, with numerous books related to anthropology appearing at this time.
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