Nancy Makepeace Tanner (1933–1989)

Nancy Makepeace Tanner and her younger brother were raised by their father after their mother died when Nancy was three years old. She first attended school in a one-room schoolhouse near her father's farm. At age 16, she was admitted to the University of Chicago, where she received her bachelor's degree at age 19. She then became a premedical student, but soon got married and dropped out. After two daughters and a divorce, Nancy returned to the University of Chicago to obtain an M.A. in education in 1959. Moving to California, she began graduate studies in anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley and spent three years doing field work in West Sumatra. She then went to the University of Chicago as a Carnegie Fellow of the Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations. She taught there for two years before joining the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1969. Professor Tanner received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1971. Her research, writing and teaching focused on three areas: dispute and conflict resolution, human communication, and sex and gender. She became a leading authority on the Minangkabau people of Western Sumatra writing numerous articles on their legal system, sociolinguistics, and social organization. Her 1974 article, "Matrifocality in Indonesia, Africa and among Black Americans" proposed a rethinking of then-current theories about matrilineal society. In 1981, she published a groundbreaking book, On Becoming Human, in which she traced the transition in human evolution from ape to Australopithecus, based on her analysis of fossil and archaeological data. The book, which has been reprinted twice, presented a powerful new theory about women's roles in human evolution and was widely praised by colleagues. She died of a heart attack at age 56.