Professor Emeritus Napoleon Chagnon (August 27, 1938 - September 21, 2019)

Chagnon was an American anthropologist, professor of anthropology at UCSB and the University of Missouri in Columbia and member of the National Academy of Sciences.Chagnon is known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians, in which he used an evolutionary approach to understand social behavior in terms of genetic relatedness. His work has centered on the analysis of violence among tribal peoples, and, using socio-biological analyses, he has advanced the argument that violence among the Yanomami is fueled by an evolutionary process in which successful warriors have more offspring. His 1967 ethnography Yanomamö: The Fierce People has become a bestseller and is frequently assigned in introductory anthropology courses. (Wikipedia)