Paleoanthropologist Rick Potts is the director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program at the National Museum of Natural History. He received his B.A. in anthropology from Temple University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from Harvard University in 1982, after which he taught anthropology at Yale University and served as curator of physical anthropology at the Yale Peabody Museum. 

Dr. Potts has spent much of his career piecing together the record of Earth’s environmental change and human adaptation. His ideas about how human evolution was a response to environmental uncertainty and disruption have stimulated wide attention and new research in several scientific fields. He leads excavations at several early human sites in the East African Rift Valley, including the famous handaxe site of Olorgesailie, Kenya, and also co-directs ongoing projects in southern and northern China.

Author of numerous research articles and books, Potts and his research have also been featured in the three-part PBS NOVA series ‘Becoming Human’ (2009) and the BBC series ‘The Origins of Us’ (2011). He has received a number of honors, including Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2004), the Explorer's Club Lowell Thomas Medal (2005), and The Peter Buck Chair in Human Origins at the National Museum of Natural History (2008).  Dr. Potts is curator of the Smithsonian’s Hall of Human Origins, which opened at the Natural History Museum in March 2010, and is author of the companion book, titled What Does It Mean To Be Human?

Website: www.humanorigins.si.edu

Excavation blog:  http://humanorigins.si.edu/research/east-african-research/olorgesailie-field-blog/2011-olorgesailie-dispatches

Links: 

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/evolution/23-how-we-won-the-hominid-warsks: 

PBS Nova Interview