Teuku Jacob

Teuku Jacob ( born December 6, 1929 in Peureulak, Aceh, † 17 October 2007 in Yogyakarta ) was an Indonesian paleoanthropologist. He was the founder and at the same time the most significant representative of his profession in Indonesia.

Teuku Jacob started in 1953 to study anatomy at the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. After his first degree (1956 ) he turned to anthropology and was a student of Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald who had discovered in Indonesia numerous fossils of Homo erectus. As a professor and rector of the Gadjah Mada temporarily University (1981-1986) Jacob was for many years trustee of a handsome collection of hominid finds. He became internationally known after the discovery of Homo floresiensis, which he denied status as a distinct species and instead as pathologically altered, anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) interpreted.

In an obituary of the journal Science has found that Teuku Jacob after the Second World War, during the so-called Indonesian revolution, a "key figure" in the struggle for the independence of Indonesia was of the Netherlands. Jacob had then produced a nationalist radio program. From 1982 to 1987 he was a member of the Indonesian Parliament.

Jacob died at the age of 76 years in Dr. Sardjito Hospital from the effects of liver disease existed for years. He was adopted by an academic ceremony, at the hundreds of members of the university and foreign guests had participated with a military salute and buried at the University of Gadjah Mada University of the cemetery. Jacob is survived by his wife and a daughter.

Works

• Some problems pertaining to the racial history of the Indonesian region: a study of human skeletal and dental remains from several prehistoric sites in Indonesia and Malaysia. Dissertation, University of Utrecht, Utrecht 1967.