James Spuhler

In 1990 James Spuhler was awarded the Award of Excellence for Scientific Reviewing by the National Academy of Sciences.  He was given this award for his reviews that used population genetics that study anthropological questions.  There were a wide array of study topics including race, intelligence, language, relationships among species, and human evolution. Spuhler explains that he writes for the "general scientific public, whether citizen or professional." Over 700 publications have cited his work.

His next project was a study of racial-ethnic differences in IQ.  This study was completed during the academic year of 1971-1972 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California. He and other scholars cooperatively researched the genetic and environmental variations that would account for the racial-ethnic differences in IQ. The results of the study stated that the environmental and genetic differences will not always occur. After this study was completed he was hired as a chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.  He started the first two courses with a focus of genetic anthropology in the United States, which influenced further teaching of biological anthropology.  The two courses were called " The Genetic Basis of Evolution" and "Population Genetics".

James Norman Spuhler (March 1, 1917 – September 2, 1992) was an American biological anthropologist who has been described as "the founder of anthropological genetics". He taught at the University of New Mexico from 1967 to 1984, where his research focused on human genetics. In 1990, he received the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing. He died of cancer at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on September 2, 1992.