Napoleon A. Chagnon was born the second of twelve children in Port Austin, Michigan, in 1938. He is married and has two children. He began his academic training at the Michigan College of Mining and Technology at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (now called Lake Superior State University), in the physics curriculum. After one year there, he transferred to the University of Michigan, changed his major to anthropology, and received his B.A. (1961), M.A. (1963), and Ph.D. (1966) degrees in anthropology at the University of Michigan. He then joined the faculty of the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan Medical School from which position he participated in an extensive multi- disciplinary study of the Y?nomamö Indians of Venezuela and Brazil. During this time he also held a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he taught anthropology courses. He has held positions at Pennsylvania State University, Cambridge University, Northwestern University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. His recent views on Anthropology as a discipline are contained in Noble Savages, his most recent book (2012).
