Brace, C. Loring (1930–)

Dr. Charles Loring Brace is a paleoanthropologist best known for his research on controversial topics such as cultural and biological impacts on dental reduction in modern populations, the fate of the Neandertals, and the biological race concept. He is curator of biological anthropology for the Museum of Anthropology, and professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Brace was born on December 19, 1930, in Hanover, New Hampshire, to Gerald Warner Brace, an English professor, and Huldah Laird Brace, a biologist. Brace became interested in prehistory in the ninth grade, when his mother introduced him to Andrews's 1945 book, Meet Your Ancestors. Brace entered Williams College and, since there was no anthropology program, majored in geology (BA, 1952).

Brace earned his MA (1958) and PhD (1962) degrees in anthropology from Harvard University. At Harvard, he studied with Earnest A. Hooton and William W. Howell, both paleoanthropologists interested in issues of race, morphometrics, and human origins. Brace taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of California, Santa Barbara, before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1967. Over several decades, he has compiled one of the largest and most regionally diverse datasets of hominid cranial and dental measurements. He uses this dataset to study cultural and biological impacts on dental reduction in hominids, to study the fate of the Neandertals, and to dismantle the biological race concept.