Russell Tuttle, scholar of human evolution, 1939-2026

The six-decade UChicago professor was known for championing honest scholarship, diverse perspectives, and his students. 

Remembered for his inclusivity and dedication to truth, Russell Tuttle, a preeminent scholar of hominid evolution, morphology, and function, died September 18 at age 87. 

Tuttle’s paleoanthropological, anatomical, and primatological research fundamentally changed multiple fields in the study of human evolution. He explored the mechanics, functions, and anatomy of hominoid locomotion and grasping, was the first to use electromyography to analyze muscle function in primates, and conducted groundbreaking analysis of the famous Laetoli footprint in Tanzania. He was also a beloved professor of Anthropology, Evolutionary Biology, and History of Science and Medicine, spending six decades at the University of Chicago, and a firm believer in human potential.

“All who interacted with him knew Professor Tuttle as honest and straightforward,” recalls Constantine V. Nakassis, Professor and Chair in the Department of Anthropology. “He would always speak out about what he thought was wrong, championed what he thought was right, and worked to make paleoanthropology and primatology more inclusive fields.”

Tuttle was born in Marion, Ohio, in 1939, eventually attending a branch campus of Ohio State University on his path to becoming a physical anthropologist. He earned his master’s degree at Ohio State’s main campus and completed his PhD in just two years at the University of Berkeley in 1965. 

His early career work in Orange Park, Florida — then one of the largest chimpanzee research operations — set the tone for his scientific practice. There, his study of chimpanzee toe curvature, a feature ideal for climbing, challenged long-held assumptions. As he would say in a 2024 interview upon his retirement from UChicago, “I'm a stickler for truth.”

“His readiness to challenge established interpretations was very much in keeping with his character,” says María Cecilia Lozada, a research associate in anthropology at UChicago who knew Tuttle for almost 40 years as a graduate student, a colleague, and as a friend. “He took evidence seriously and believed that scholars had a responsibility to question conclusions that the evidence did not support. He could be direct, and he did not retreat from a disagreement simply because his view was unpopular.”

Tuttle joined the University of Chicago in 1964, a year before completing his PhD, where he initially believed he might become a doctor (he excelled at dissections) and taught medical anatomy. His course on comparative primate anatomy, however, drove him to explore the differences and similarities between apes and people. When presenting a paper on his research at the British Royal Society, he was introduced to Mary Leakey, who would spark some of his most significant studies. A British paleoanthropologist, Leakey discovered the Paranthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, and she requested that Tuttle study the Laetoli, Tanzania, footprints that her team found at the Olduvai Gorge. Tuttle’s research there would again challenge long-held views: He found the 3.66 million-year-old bipedal footprint trails were probably not made by an Australopithecus afarensis, a chimp-like hominid known for the partial skeleton Lucy from Ethiopia. The findings shook the science community while it further strengthened Tuttle’s commitment to truth-finding. In total, the scholar would undertake field and laboratory studies in Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Japan, and Perú, and in numerous museums in Europe, Asia and North America.

Tuttle’s research, while at times field-shaking, was highly regarded. He was the recipient of the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (2014), the Distinguished Primatologist Award of the Midwest Primate Interest Group (2010), a Medallion of the Collège de France, and a Medal of the Fondation Singer-Polignac. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1985 and was inducted into the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2003.

Notably, his work on footprints brought him to an unexpected twist in his career: the courtroom. Tuttle was asked to join a team of barristers and solicitors in Winnipeg, Canada, who were defending two Hispanic men accused of involvement in a murder. The Queen’s Counsel for the prosecution had engaged Louise M. Robbins, a certified forensic anthropologist who had worked on a different part of the footprints trail, who claimed to have developed a new science of human footprint analysis for forensic use. Her speculations about the makers of some Laetoli prints led Tuttle to question her scientific ability and methods, some of which were also used to make unfounded racial assumptions. 

“Dr. Tuttle maintained that the courtroom was not the proper forum for speculative, unevidenced methods that could end up informing matters of life and death,” says Matthew Rossi, a PhD candidate in Anthropology who served as Tuttle's research assistant from 2023 to 2026. Rossi studies forensic science from an ethnographic and sociopolitical perspective, and he spoke at length with Tuttle about his work opposing Robbins's forensic methods in the courtroom. “I think it is to his great credit that he spoke up and sounded the alarm on these methods. A common refrain from Dr. Tuttle was that, as scientists interested in the past, we never ‘reconstruct’ the past, as this implies that we already have the full picture and we just need to put it back together. Rather, we are always doing work that is ‘construction,’ and there needs to be a solid evidential foundation and willingness to reckon with uncertainty, error, and new developments in our fields.”

After his experience in this and other trials, Tuttle wrote Footprints from Fossils to Gallows in 2023, written in part as a memoir. His goal was to offer a better understanding of how science can serve the courts — and how claims of new forensic methods should be tested thoroughly before used to determine an individual’s fate. He was also the editor of The Functional and Evolutionary Biology of Primates (1972), as well as author of Apes of the World: Their Social Behavior, Communication, Mentality and Ecology (1986), and Apes and Human Evolution (2014). In addition, he served as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Primatology for two decades, as well as the editor of the book series Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. 

Tuttle’s insistence on truth and fairness extended beyond the courtroom: Karen B. Strier, a Vilas Research Professor and the Irven DeVore Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recalls that in Tuttle’s 20 years as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Primatology, he worked hard to open doors for others. 

“He was very committed to helping make sure that primatologists for whom English was not their first language weren’t blocked from publishing,” says Strier, who has served on the IJP editorial board since 1990. “He did a lot of editing and made sure people had fair reviews. He really cared about making primatology international. He was super supportive of women in the field and of primatologists from around the world.”

Supporting others was a common theme for Tuttle, whether in large or small gestures. The examples range from Tuttle’s successful nomination of Strier for an honorary doctorate at UChicago to welcoming Lozada into his home for her first Thanksgiving in America upon her arrival in 1987. According to his former students and fellow scholars, Tuttle offered unwavering support of younger colleagues and provided thoughtful mentorship.

“I got to know Dr. Tuttle quite well during my research assistantship, and what always stood out about him was his forthrightness,” Rossi says. “He was a role model for intellectual honesty, evidence-based scientific practice, and abiding by your principles in your scholarship.”

Tuttle’s UChicago colleagues note that his legacy is present in the role of physical anthropology at the university. Rossi and Lozada have undertaken a study of the field’s history, and Lozada says she’s been struck by Tuttle’s persistence in advocating for physical anthropology. In fact, he donated troves of material in the last few years to the university’s Special Collections, including his correspondences, research, teaching materials, and data and specimens from his various studies of footprints, animal behavior, and functional morphology. He also left a large teaching collection of osteological materials to the Department of Anthropology for instructing future students in primatology, osteology, anatomy, and other fields of biological anthropology.

Tuttle placed an enormous emphasis on supporting his students, as evidenced not only through his donations of research and teaching materials, but also through his winning of the University’s Quantrell Award in 2006 as well as the McGraw Hill Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the American Anthropological Association in 2003. He also established a program for 10 Midwest colleges, including UChicago undergraduates, to study biological and physical anthropology at the University of Tanzania for six months. But Rossi contends that developing the Department of Anthropology's first curriculum for undergraduate students was one of his proudest accomplishments.

“[It] still forms the basis of UChicago's anthropology major today after undergoing its own evolutions over the years,” Rossi says. “Teaching undergraduates was one of Dr. Tuttle's favorite parts of being a professor, a passion that bore out in his ‘Apes and Human Evolution’ class, which frequently had the highest enrollment numbers in the department and an annual waiting list.”

His former students — undergrads and graduates alike — knew Tuttle to be supportive and kind. Lozada calls Tuttle instrumental to her graduate education: “He treated his students as people whose futures mattered to him, and he continued to care about them long after they had completed their studies.”

Outside of the university, Tuttle was a dedicated husband to Marlene and father to Nicole and Matthew. He and Marlene frequently attended the opera, plays, and choral events across the Chicago area, and his love for animals meant even the most aloof critters would respond to him. Perhaps most notably, though, Tuttle is remembered for the depth of his commitment.

“He was devoted to his family and to his students, and he did not put professional convenience ahead of his principles,” Lozada says. “He wanted his students to have a voice in the discipline and opportunities to build their careers.” 

Lozada recalls a particular memory that conveys the quality and breadth of those relationships: Years ago, Tuttle walked his former student, Charles Musiba — now a professor of Biological Anthropology at Duke University — down the aisle at his wedding.

“His wry sense of humor and his passion for life, family, for music, and for knowledge will be deeply missed in Haskell Hall and the University at large,” his former colleague Nakassis says.