Early life and education
In the history of anthropology, Adolf Bastian occupies the ground between patient observation and the larger claims it makes possible.
Adolf Bastian was born at Bremen in 1826. His recorded nationality is Bremen. He was educated at Altes Gymnasium (Bremen) and Heidelberg University.
Professional career and academic appointments
The nineteenth century professionalised science. Laboratories acquired budgets, universities acquired chairs, and for the first time a person could be a scientist by occupation rather than by inclination.
He held appointments at Ethnological Museum Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where the work centred on ethnography.
Twenty questions, eight minutes on the clock, and a percentile measured against everyone who has taken it. No sign-up.
Take the IQ test →Contributions to anthropology and ethnography
The work that carried his reputation furthest concerned contributions to the development of ethnography and the development of anthropology as a discipline. Anthropology is fieldwork before it is theory, and the fieldwork has often outlasted the theory.
The surviving body of work includes Zeitschrift für Ethnologie.
Academic scope and institutional influence
He did not stay inside one field: the work runs across anthropology, natural history and psychology, which tells you as much about the era's training as about the person.
Working from Bremen shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.
Recognition and historical legacy
His work was formally recognised with the Order of the Red Eagle 2nd Class.
Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Anthropology is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.
Death
Adolf Bastian died in 1905 at the age of 79. The work outlived the debates that surrounded it, which is the only durable form of scientific success.
Achievements
- Notable work: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie
- Held posts at Ethnological Museum Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- Educated at Altes Gymnasium (Bremen), Heidelberg University and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
- Fields of research: ethnography
