John Napier

Lectures In 1970 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on Monkeys Without Tails: A Giraffe's Eye-view of Man.

Bigfoot research Napier was one of the first notable scientists to give serious attention to the Bigfoot/Sasquatch phenomenon. His investigations included interviewing amateur investigators and purported eyewitnesses, visiting alleged Bigfoot sighting areas, studying the scant physical evidence, and screening the 1967 Patterson–Gimlin film. Napier concluded the film was a clever hoax: "the scientific evidence taken collectively points to a hoax of some kind." However, by the same token, in reference to the Patterson–Gimlin film, Napier did also state on page 89 of his 1973 book 'Bigfoot: The Yeti And Sasquatch In Myth And Reality', "there was nothing in this film which would prove conclusively that this was a hoax."

In his 1973 book on the subject, Napier ultimately judged the evidence to be inconclusive: there was not enough hard proof to confirm to Napier that Bigfoot was a real creature. However, Napier judged the indirect evidence – especially footprints – as compelling and intriguing enough to avoid dismissing the subject as entirely unworthy of serious study.

Institutions St Bartholomew's Hospital, Senior House Surgeon, Chief Assistant to the Orthopaedic Unit, Registrar of the Peripheral Nerve Injury Unit (1934–1946) University College London Medical School, Demonstrator in the Department of Anatomy (1944–1949) Royal Free Hospital, London, Lecturer in Anatomy (1955–1967); Director of the Unit of Primatology and Human Evolution (1961–1967) Smithsonian Institution, Conservator of the Division of Mammals and Director of the Unit of Primatology and Human Evolution (1967–1969) Queen Elizabeth College, Director of the Program in Primate Biology (1969–1973) Birkbeck College, Visiting Professor of Primate Biology (1973–1978)

Selected bibliography A Handbook of Living Primates (New York: Academic Press, 1967, with Prudence Hero Napier) Old World Monkeys: Evolution, Systematics, and Behavior (New York: Academic Press, 1970, with Prudence Hero Napier) Roots of Mankind (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971) Bigfoot; The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality (New York: E P Dutton, 1973) Bigfoot (New York: Berkley Pub. Corp., 1974) Monkeys without Tails (New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1976) Primate Locomotion (London: Oxford University Press, 1976) Primates and Their Adaptations (Burlington, NC: Scientific Publications Division, Carolina Biological Supply Co., 1977.) Hands (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) The Natural History of the Primates (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988, with Prudence Hero Napier)