Peter Farb (1929–1980) was an American author, anthropologist, linguist and naturalist.

Biography

Farb was born July 25, 1929, in New York City to Solomon and Cecelia Farb. In 1950, he graduated magna cum laude from Vanderbilt University. He attended Columbia University graduate school from 1950 to 1951. He married museum director and painter Oriole Horch in 1953, and together they had two sons, Mark Daniel and Thomas Forest. Peter Farb was a freelance writer in the areas of the natural and human sciences for many years, authoring many acclaimed books, including several books for young readers, and columns in national magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens and Reader's Digest. President John F. Kennedy's Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, described him as "one of the finest conservation spokesmen of our period". He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Farb died from leukemia on April 8, 1980, in Boston, Massachusetts. At the time of his death, he had been working with Irven DeVore on a new book, The Human Experience: A Textbook of Anthropology.

Dates of interest

1950–1952: Argosy Magazine feature editor 1960–1961: editor-in-chief of the publishing agent Panorama until the project sponsored by the Columbia Broadcasting System ended. 1964–1971: Curator for American Indian Cultures, Riverside Museum, New York, N.Y. 1971: National Book Awards Committee Judge 1971–1972: visiting lecturer, Yale University 1971–1978: Fellow of Calhoun College, Yale University 1976: University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Trustee 1966–1971: Consultant to the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Books