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Spirited Evolutionist Robert Broom and Stellenbosch Revisited on a Zoological Centenary*

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Spirited Evolutionist Robert Broom and Stellenbosch Revisited on a Zoological Centenary* View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Stellenbosch University SUNScholar Repository 322 South African Journal of Science 101, July/August 2005 History of Science Spirited evolutionist Robert Broom and Stellenbosch revisited on a zoological centenary* P.V. Tobias The Department of Zoology at the University of Stellenbosch, of which I’m proud to be an honorary member, has had a long and illustrious history. Here I celebrate the memory of its foundation professor, a man ‘sacredly devoted to the pursuit of science’. Zoology in 1903 ogy, a tincture of cytochemistry and even What was the state of biology in 1903? a smudge of cytogenetics were estab- Robert Broom (1866–1951), the spirited evolutionist. Genetics, as a science, was just beginning. lished branches of study, although such (Courtesy Transvaal Museum.) Gregor Mendel’s laws of heredity had refinements as phase contrast micros- only two years earlier been re-discovered copy, electron microscopy, ultraviolet ab- Karoo fossil reptiles led to a D.Sc. thesis, by Hugo De Vries in the Netherlands, sorption spectrophotometry, radiation the degree being awarded by the Univer- K.E. Correns in Germany and Erich biology, and X-ray diffraction studies sity of Glasgow in 1905. Tschermak von Seysenegg in Austria. were not known. The discovery of Rönt- Broom seems to have been quite the Only 35 years earlier, Mendel, in the gen rays (or X-rays) had happened only most extraordinary of the early professors Augustinian monastery at Brno in what is eight years earlier, but their application in at the university. He defied the senate’s now the Czech Republic, had proposed biological research had hardly begun. wishes that he take a roll call at each these laws from his studies on pea plants. That, in sum, was the state of play lecture and enter the names of defaulters By 1905, it was found that Mendel’s laws when Robert Broom was appointed as the in an Absentee Book. He pointed out that applied to human beings: the family foundation professor of zoology at the his lectures were extremely well-attended concerned showed brachydactyly inher- University of Stellenbosch. By an interest- and his students passed their examina- ited as a simple Mendelian dominant ing synchronicity, also in 1903, Arthur tions. He agreed to reconsider the matter trait. Each of the second to fifth fingers Dendy was appointed as the first professor only if any other senate member had a had only two phalanges, instead of three of zoology at the South African College, better record. Apparently no-one did. 1 as is the fashion ! forerunner of the University of Cape Of his lectures, Findlay states, ‘He was By 1903, no ancient hominid fossils had Town.2 As far as I have been able to trace, thoroughly versed in the subject matter of been brought to light in any part of Africa. Dendy at Cape Town and Broom at his lectures and scarcely bothered much It was widely held that the cradle of Stellenbosch3 were the first two professors with preparing them. They had a sponta- humankind was in Asia. Java Man had of zoology in southern Africa. What of neous character which was made even been discovered in 1890/91 in Indonesia Johannesburg? The South African School more lively when Broom strayed from the (then known as the Dutch East Indies), of Mines and Technology,the precursor of subject to express his views on topics whilst in China, in 1903, K.A. Haberer the University of the Witwatersrand, did of wider concern such as religion and found in a Peking pharmacy a human not set up a department of zoology until politics’. While at Victoria College, tooth which was recognized as that of a 1917 when H.B. Fantham was appointed Broom’s students included such men as fossil man: thus began the unfolding 4 head, serving from 1917 to 1932. C.G. (‘Oom Coert’) Grobbelaar, who of the tale of Peking Man. So informed became a pioneer in the study of the people 100 years ago were looking to the Khoisan peoples and human growth6; Far East as the original home of human- Robert Broom and Stellenbosch D.E. Malan, the zoologist; the surgeon, kind. Such was the zoological background to Tielman Roos Scholtz and Gilles de Kock, Experimental embryology was a product Robert Broom’s tenure as professor of the veterinary scientist. His favourite of the late 19th century. Wilhelm Roux’s zoology and geology at Victoria College pupils from Stellenbosch are reported to seminal works on Entwicklungsmechanik from August 1903 to 1909. By today’s appeared in 1888 and 1895. Ecology, too, standards, such a combination would be have been Christo Beyers, the surgeon, would have been a part of the thinking of decidedly odd. However, according to his and P.J. Du Toit, an exceptional South 5 biologists, for it had been formally de- biographer, George Findlay, it had been African veterinary scientist and one of a fined as a scientific discipline by Ernst the practice at Broom’s alma mater, rather small number of South African Haeckel as early as 1866 (the year in which Glasgow University, until 1902 to combine scholars to have been made a Fellow of Robert Broom was born). Histology, cytol- zoology and geology in one chair. the Royal Society of London. Apart from When Victoria College offered him the those busy years at Stellenbosch, Broom *This article is based on the John Ellerman Commemora- chair, Broom had obtained his M.D. was not blessed with many research stu- tive Lecture for 2003, given at the University of Stellenbosch on 30 October 2003. The author is in the degree and had some 65 publications to dents, because he became a rural medical School of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. his name. He was 37 years of age. While practitioner and much later a member of E-mail: [email protected] he was at this university, his studies on the Transvaal Museum. History of Science South African Journal of Science 101, July/August 2005 323 In later years, his principal protégé was the University of Glasgow: his thesis was immediately wrote a couple of papers in John Talbot Robinson, who had a distin- devoted to the comparative anatomy of support of Dart’s claims. In his 1933 book, guished, albeit rather brief, career as a the organ of Jacobson, that enigmatic little The Coming of Man: Was it Accident or palaeo-anthropologist and as Broom’s structure on each side of the nasal septum.8 Design?,13 he went beyond what Dart had successor at the Transvaal Museum.7 Just imagine doing that in a small town, done and confidently assigned the genus Taralga, in the Blue Mountains of New Australopithecus to the family Hominidae. Robert Broom’s career South Wales, far from library resources, Broom also offered a projected reconstruc- For those who would seek to know having to do all his own drawings freehand tion of how the adult might have looked; more about the life of Robert Broom, one in an era long before photocopying or the in remarkable detail it prognosticated of the most remarkable scientists to have computer had arrived. His father, John the form of the adult australopithecine made South Africa his home, I can Broom, in Edinburgh laboriously copied specimens subsequently found at Sterk- warmly recommend the biography by scientific articles and even drawings, fontein. Findlay, published in 1972.5 Here let me sending them by sea to Australia. As Broom was already sixty-seven years give a brief summary of his life. It is Leaving Australia in May 1896, the old and living in penury, Dart wrote to eminently worthwhile to ponder over the Brooms spent a year in the British Isles. General J.C. Smuts and J.H. Hofmeyr and lives of great men and to dissect what This enabled him to visit the Natural informed them how wasteful it was that a messages one can receive from them. It History Museum and make acquaintance scientist of Broom’s worldwide repute has been my experience that palaeo-an- with some Karoo fossils. He realized that should be languishing in the backwoods. thropologists are commonly every bit as great opportunities might await him He was unable even to finance the journey interesting as the fossils they recover. In- in South Africa, which seems to have to take up his presidency of the South deed, in 1951, J.B.S. Haldane stated that determined him to move to South Africa African Association for the Advancement ‘Broom is almost as worthy of study as the in 1897. Here he remained until his death of Science. In 1934, a year later,Broom was fossils he has collected. He did the work of in 1951. He initially worked as a rural offered a temporary post at the Transvaal a dozen ordinary lifetimes in his spare medical practitioner in Port Nolloth, Museum, Pretoria, where he remained for time. It is good to think that such a man Garies, Port Elizabeth and Pearston. He 17 years. He immediately set about has made the most important discoveries seemed to prefer life in isolated country searching for an adult Australopithecus. of our generation concerning human evo- districts where living vertebrates and This search carried him to the Skurweberg lution.’ (cited by Findlay5 in the Introduc- fossils were always to be had. and to Gladysvale. tion to his biography of Broom). His recognition of the probable ancestors In August 1936, one of Dart’s medical The palaeontologist, D.M.S.
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