Jane Hainline Underwood Papers, 1965-2000

Abstract

Dr. Jane Hanline Hammons Underwood was born in Fort Bliss, Texas to a Quaker family, marrying at age 15. She graduated from University of California Riverside in anthropology and Biology in 1960 and completed a PhD at UCLA in 1964, graduating as one of the few biological anthropologists at the time. Her dissertation explored the relationship between ecology and demography at the time. While a professor at UC Riverside, she conducted fieldwork on the island of Yap. This work and that which followed established her as an authority on the population history of the Pacific and one of the earliest proponents of biocultural anthropology. She explored a wide range of problems related to island demography and disease over her career. A passionate and committed teacher of Pacific anthropology and biological anthropology, Jane published two textbooks, Biocultural Interactions and Human Variation, 1975, and Human Microevolution and Human Variation,1978. (In Memoriam Anthropology News October 2011.)