About

The mission of this web page to present historical research on Samuel George Morton, and the race scholars (sometime referred to as “race scientists”) who preceded and followed him. The focus of this research is: 1) Examining primary source documents to gain insights into how Morton and his fellow race scholars viewed the anatomical variation present in the human racial spectrum; 2) Illuminating how past race scholars have influenced current views on race among academics, policy makers, and the general public; and 3) Researching the lives of the people whose skeletal remains where collected by Morton and his fellow race scholars

The content provider and manager of this webpage is John S. Michael, an independent scholar from just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who began to study the life, times, and research of Samuel George Morton in the 1980s. In the 2010s, Michael broadened his research program to focus on Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). Mr. Michael has recently begun researching Franz Weidenreich (1873–1948). You can contact Mr. Michael via his web page at academia.edu.

Mr. Michael’s CV is presented below:

• Research Associate of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 2022–Current
• Consulting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania Museum, Physical Anthropology, 2016–2020.
• Chester County Planning Commission, Environmental Land Planner/Demographer, 1998–Current.
• U. S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, American Community Survey Data Users Group, 2024–2028 Steering Committee, Member, 2024­–Current.
• American Institute of Certified Planners, American Planning Association, 2016–Current.
• Temple University, Ambler, PA: Land Planning/Landscape Architecture coursework, 1992–1994.
• Macalester College, Saint Paul, MN: BA Highest Honors in Geology, 1986.

2021 (October), “Porträts von interessanten Personen: A new look at J. F. Blumenbach’s typological labels and the exemplars he discussed in his anthropological research,” Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology/Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Theorie der Biologie.

2020, “An “American Humboldt”?: Memorializing Philadelphia Physician and Race Supremacist Samuel George Morton,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies.

2018, with Paul Wolff Mitchell, “Bias, Brains, and Skulls: Tracing the Legacy of Scientific Racism in the Nineteenth-Century Works of Samuel George Morton and Friedrich Tiedemann,” in Embodied Difference: Divergent Bodies in Public Discourse, J. Thomas and C. Jackson, eds.

2017, “Nuance Lost in Translation: Interpretations of J. F. Blumenbach’s Anthropology in the English Speaking World,” NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin

1988, “A New Look at Morton’s Craniological Research,” Current Anthropology.

2023, posted “Vedado, donde no se entierran más que negros bozals”: The burial grounds of 55 enslaved Africans whose skulls were acquired by S. G. Morton, on the Related Research landing page of the Penn & Slavery Project web page.

2023, prepared the first translation of “Das Problem der jüdischen Rasse,” published by Franz Weidenreich in 1931.

2022, presented “Memorializing Philadelphia Physician and Race Supremacist Samuel George Morton,” at the Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Meeting at Lycoming College

2021, academic poster How Blumenbach’s Illustrations of Human Racial Variation were Manipulated presented at the symposium “J. F. Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb (1789): “What is life?” in science, philosophy and politics around 1800.” Göttingen University, Germany.

2020, edited by Paul Lovejoy, “Associates of Vassa, Scientific: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach,” posted the Equiano’s World webpage of York University, Ontario, Canada, based on my report “Another virtuous Negro”: G. Vassa and J. F. Blumenbach likely met in 1792.”

2018, authored a biography of Samuel George Morton and a bibliography of his writings posted at the Penn Museum’s “Morton Cranial Collection” web site https://www.penn.museum/sites/morton/.

2016, at the Library Company of Philadelphia, located Morton’s notes containing an unlabeled translation of Tiedemann’s pro-Negro paper of 1837.

2015, academic poster Blumenbach’s De Generis Humani (1795) was Mistranslated into English in 1865 presented at the symposium “J. F. Blumenbach and the Culture of Science in Europe around 1800,” Göttingen University, Germany.

2015, at the Scottish National Library, located letters in which Samuel George Morton explains that he is conducting his race research to disprove Friedrich Tiedemann’s findings.

2013, with Karen Marshall, Chester County Historical Resource Officer: located the site of Gen. Cornwallis’s fording of the Brandywine Creek during the Battle of Brandywine, 1777.

1986, re-measured the Morton Collection of Human Crania at the University of Pennsylvania.

2019, T. Junker, “Blumenbach’s theory of human races and the natural unity of humankind.” In N. Rupke, ed.  Blumenbach and the Culture of Science in Europe around 1800.

2011, J. Lewis, et al., “The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias.”  PLoS Biol. 2011.

2009, J. Buikstra, “Introduction to Reprint,” Crania Americana. Davenport, IA: Gustav’s Library.

2005 C. Loring Brace, “Race” Is a Four-Letter Word, New York: Oxford University Press