Professor José Pons died on 29 July 2013, aged 95 years. He held chairs in Physical Anthropology at Oviedo, Madrid and Barcelona universities and contributed decisively to the development of the subject in Spain, as a scientist, as a teacher and as the shaper of new generations of anthropologists.
His professional career started in the University of Barcelona under Professor Alcobé who directed his doctoral thesis (“Human remains from the Roman age necropolis in Tarragona and Ampurias”, 1948). From the start he shared the approach of his American and European colleagues who forged the “New Physical Anthropology” based on the biology of populations, genetic variability and adaptation. He was also aware that, to understand the biology of populations, adequate statistical methods were required, methods which he adopted and transmitted to his students via his excellent course “Quantitative Anthropology”. He published many studies on the biology of historical populations and on different genetic aspects of present populations, with a special focus on “isolates” and polymer inheritance characteristics such as dermatoglyphs, an area in which he specialized. His role as an international researcher is witnessed by many publications in prestigious European and American journals (Human Biology, Homo, Annals of Human Genetics, American Journal of Human Genetics, Human Heredity and Anthropologischer Anzieger among others), by his involvement in the International Biological Programme, where, as part of the “Human Adaptability” project, he developed “Anthropological and Genetic Studies in Spain”, and by his Presidency of the International Dermatoglyphic Association for 10 years; he also participated in various research projects and international congresses with financial support from institutions such as the Wenner Grenn Foundation.
He was Professor at Oviedo (1962–1967), Madrid (1967–1973) and Barcelona, from 1973 until his retirement in 1986, after which he kept up his research activity, publishing with his pupils. At all three universities he was able to interest his students in physical anthropology by his simple yet thorough approach, ingeniously manoeuvring around the fact that evolution could not be included in the teaching programmes during the dictatorship and encouraging his students to make the effort to read international reference journals (well represented in his departments), using what he called the “cherry simile”: “you see” – he would say – “when you take a handful of cherries, you pick up a lot more than you think, because they tangle together and until you try them you don’t know which are the tastiest. Bibliography is the same, the articles you choose to read are entangled with many references and you need to read all of them because you never know which will open up new alternatives and explanations to your questions”.
We, the Spanish physical anthropologists, will dearly miss him and we will do our best to continue what he had begun.