Penrose's Work and Views in Relation to Anthropology

Abstract

Lionel Penrose's work was essentially concerned with medical genetics and, as this audience is well aware, especially with mental defect. He very seldom published in an anthropological journal, and on the few occasions when he mentioned anthropologists in his writings his remarks were not very complimentary. However, those of us who are in the business can take comfort from the fact that these remarks were generally aimed at an earlier generation of anthropologists who had failed to benefit from what human genetics already had to offer in the years before World War II.