PROFILE:
Professor Walter Hartwig, PhD
Associate Professor and Chair of Department of Basic Sciences, College of
Osteopathic Medicine, Touro University, California.
Professor Walter Hartwig is a physical (biological) anthropologist. He obtained his PhD from the University of California - Berkeley and is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of Basic Sciences at the Touro University - California College of Osteopathic Medicine.
His research specialty is human/primate evolution. He is particularly interested in how the Primate Order arose and evolved, principally as seen through the fossil record, and in how questions about evolution, particularly primate and human evolution, are framed, executed and interpreted scientifically.
He tries to account for current trends or consensus opinions in terms of how data have accumulated over time and is an advocate for the value of inductive reasoning in scientific inquiry.
He edited a research volume entitled The Primate Fossil Record in 2002 (Cambridge University Press) which has been widely reviewed and cited as an important reference work on this topic. He has also published on the relationship between science, as a method of analysis and understanding, and topics of human evolution (e.g. Chamberlain and Hartwig, ‘Thomas Kuhn and paleoanthropology’, Evolutionary Anthropology, 1999).
In 2007 Professor Hartwig had authored over 45 scientific articles and book chapters on comparative anatomy, primate evolution and the history of sciences.
He has served for the last several years on the Executive Committee of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Pacific Division.
Professor Hartwig has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California - Berkeley and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Missouri.