According to a 1995 interview by Leonard Lieberman, Andrew Lyons and Hariet Lyons in
Current Anthropology, Montagu was born in
London's East End to Jewish parents as
Israel Ehrenberg. He later changed his name to "Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu" and went by "Ashley Montagu" after moving to the
United States. He developed an interest in anatomy very quickly and as a boy was befriended by
Arthur Keith. In
1922, at the age of 17, he entered
University College London, where he received a diploma in
psychology after studying with
Karl Pearson and
C.E. Spearman and taking
anthropology courses with
Eliott Grafton Smith and
Charles Gabriel Seligman. He also studied at the
London School of Economics, where he became one of the first students of
Bronislaw Malinowski. He pursued post-graduate work at
Columbia University, where he produced a dissertation in
1938 entitled
Coming into being among the Australian Aborigines: A study of the procreative beliefs of the native tribes of Australia which was directed by
Franz Boas and
Ruth Benedict. He taught anatomy at various school in the United States before becoming a professor of anthropology at
Rutgers from 1949 to 1955.
In the 1950s Montagu produced a series of works questioning the validity of
race as a biological concept, including the
UNESCO Statement on Race and his very well-known
Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. He was particularly opposed to the work of
Carleton S. Coon. In 1952, together with
William Vogt, he gave the first
Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, inaugurating the series.
He retired from his academic career in 1955 and moved to
Princeton, New Jersey to pursue his popular writing and public appearances. He became a well-known guest on
Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. He directed his numerous published studies on the significant relationship of mother and infant to the general public. The humanizing effects of touch informed the studies of isolation-reared monkeys and adult pathological violence that is the subject of his Time-Life documentary “Rock A Bye Baby” (1970).
Later in life, Montagu actively opposed
genital modification and mutilation of children. In 1994, James Prescott, Ph.D., wrote and named in honor of Dr. Montagu, who was one of its original signers, the
Ashley Montagu Resolution to End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide: A Petition to the World Court, The Hague. Supporters worldwide sign it now at
http://MontaguNoCircPetition.org.
Montagu taught and lectured at
Harvard, Rutgers University (for one year)
University of California, and
New York University. He wrote over 60 books.
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