Rudolf Martin

RUDOLF MARTIN (Rudolf Martin, 1864-1925), noted German anthropologist, in his later years professor at the University of Munich, author of a fundamental textbook on anthropology, which after his death was published in a second, significantly expanded edition, edited by his wife and collaborator S. Oppenheim. Martin revised anthropological methodology. He and his colleagues developed new series of instruments for osteo- and anthropometric measurements, established new reference points for measurements, introduced new terminology, and applied methods of variation statistics to the processing of anthropological data. In various branches of the science of man, the school of M. collected vast material. In his later years, M. began the systematic study of the physical development and constitutional properties of the population of Germany, primarily children. The methodology of Martin's school gained wide recognition and formed the basis of various social hygiene, clinical, and other research in anthropometry. A student of Wiedersheim and Weismann, M. built the analysis of anthropological characteristics on the basis of comparative anatomy and was one of the first to introduce data from modern genetics into the science of man. Personally, M. remained alien to the extremes and perversions of this trend, into which some geneticists and anthropologists (Lenz, Scheidt, Günther) fell, who developed modern reactionary German eugenic doctrine. Main works of M.: "Die Inlandstamme der Malayischen Halbinsel" (Jena, 1905); "Richtlinien für Körpermessung und deren statistische Verarbeitung" (Munich, 1924; Russian ed.-M., 1927); "Anthropometry" (Handb. der sozialen Hygiene, hrsg. v. A. Gottstein, A. Schlossmann u. L. Teleky, B. I, B., 1925); "Lehrbuch der Anthropologie in systematischer Darstellung" (B. I-III, Jena, 1928).