Napoleon Chagnon

Who is Napoleon Chagnon?

Napoleon A. Chagnon is an American anthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Missouri in Columbia. He is best known for his long-term ethnographic field work among the Yanomamö, a society of indigenous tribal Amazonians, as well as his contributions to evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology, and to the study of warfare. A New York Times reviewer labeled Chagnon the "most controversial anthropologist" in the United States in a New York Times Magazine profile preceding the publication of Chagnon's most recent book, Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes—the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists, a scientific memoir. Allegations that he played a role in communal violence and introduced disease prompted his early retirement.