Jan Czekanowski (October 8, 1882, Głuchów – July 20, 1965,

Szczecin Szczecin ( , , ; ; ; or ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Poland-Germany border, German border, it is a major port, seaport, the la ...

) was a Polish

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

statistician A statistician is a person who works with Theory, theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private sector, private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, a ...

, ethnographer,

travel Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical Location (geography), locations. Travel can be done by Pedestrian, foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without Baggage, luggage, a ...

ler, and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

. He was one of the first persons to use quantitative methods in linguistics. Czekanowski played an important role in saving the Polish-

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

n branch of the Karaite people from

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

extermination. In 1942, he managed to convince

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

" race scientists" that the Karaites were of Turkic origin although professing

Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...

and using

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

as a liturgical language. This helped the Karaites escape the tragic destiny of other European

Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...

s and the Romas.

Life

Czekanowski attended school in Warsaw but was transferred to Latvia, where he finished his education in 1901. He then entered a university in Zurich in 1902; there, he studied anthropology, mathematics, anatomy, and ethnography as a pupil of Swiss anthropologist Rudolf Martin, author of the popular anthropology textbook ''Lehrbuch der Anthropologie''. In 1907 Czekanowski defended his doctoral dissertation. For his dissertation research he traveled to the Royal Museum in Berlin and to Middle Africa from 1906 to 1907. While in Africa, he led a team into the Congo to collect ethnographic materials. While working on studying the societies of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

, he developed various statistical methods and contributed to the field of

taxonomy image:Hierarchical clustering diagram.png, 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme o ...

. The research he made in Africa has since been published in five volumes and sent in 1910, to Saint Petersburg ethnography. This colonial research was the milestone of

phrenology Phrenology is a pseudoscience that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. It is based on the concept that the Human brain, brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific ...

and

eugenics Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...

. He stole 800 skulls from

Rwanda Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by ...

and took them to Europe for examination and classification. This research led to artificial racial division of Rwanda people into

Tutsi The Tutsi ( ), also called Watusi, Watutsi or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu languages, Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi ( ...

Hutu The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic group native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda where they form one of the principal ethnic groups alongside the Tutsi and the Great L ...

and Twa. This division was later used by the Belgian colonial rule to divide people into ruling class and working class. This colonially constructed order and growing tension was the reason for the

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Gre ...

in 1994. He then became a professor at the

University of Lviv The Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (named after Ivan Franko, ) is a state-sponsored university in Lviv, Ukraine. Since 1940 the university is named after Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko. The university is the oldest institution of highe ...

and University of Poznań. While working he introduced an innovative approach to mathematical statistics. He worked in these universities from 1913 to 1945 and in the period 1923-1924 he was a president of Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists. In addition, he worked at the University of Poznań from 1937 to 1946, where he researched the dynamics of evolution in human populations. He played numerous scientific roles at the University of Poznań, including vice-chairman of the Polish Social Statistic Company.

Racial classification

In the context of the racial theories of his time which have since been disproved by modern genetics,Templeton, A. (2016). Evolution and Notions of Human Race. In Losos J. & Lenski R. (Eds.), ''How Evolution Shapes Our Lives: Essays on Biology and Society'' (pp. 346–361). Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press. p. 360 . See also: Czekanowski classified Europeans into four pure races. The four pure races were the Nordic, Mediterranean (Ibero-Insular), Lapponoid and Armenoid. The Lapponoid included the central and eastern Europeans along Europe longitudely as well as the

Sami people Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

of Northern Europe. Czekanowski classified six subraces in Europe which were mixed types of the pure races. The six mixed racial subraces were: the Northwestern (Nordic and Mediterranean), the Subnordic (Nordic and Lapponoid), Alpine (Nordic and Armenoid), the Littoral (Mediterranean and Armenoid), Sublapponoid (Mediterranean and Lapponoid) and the Dinaric (Lapponoid and Armenoid). The Sublapponoid subrace (also called Pile Dwelling race) lived around the Swiss lakes.Coon, Carleton S. The Races of Europe. Racial Classification within the White Family. August 11, 2006. <.> The Greek letters which symbolise races and types could be capital or lower case. ;Pure Races : α =Nordic race : ε =Ibero-Insular race : λ =Lapponoid race : χ =Armenoid race ;Mixed Types : ι =Northwestern mixed type : γ =Subnordic mixed type : ω =Alpine mixed type : ρ or ρ =Littoral mixed type : β =Pile Dwelling mixed type : δ =Dinaric mixed type

Linguistics

Czekanowski introduced

numerical taxonomy Numerical taxonomy is a classification system in biological systematics which deals with the grouping by numerical methods of taxonomic units based on their character states. It aims to create a taxonomy using numeric algorithms like cluster an ...

into

comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or proto-language and comparative linguistics aim ...

, thus founding the discipline of

computational linguistics Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...

. He developed (1913) a still much-used index of similarity between two samples. He applied it to

phonemes A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

and

words A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its ...

in text

corpora Corpus (plural ''corpora'') is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of ...

of different languages. It was later introduced in analysis of

ecological Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely re ...

communities A community is a Level of analysis, social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place (geography), place, set of Norm (social), norms, culture, religion, values, Convention (norm), customs, or Ide ...

Books

* ''Forschungen im Nil-Kongo. Zwischengebiet'' (1911–17) * ''Zarys metod statystycznych w zastosowaniu do antropologii'' n outline of statistical methods applied in anthropology Warszawa: Towarzystwo Naukowe Warszawskie (1913) * ''Zarys antropologii Polski'' (1930) * ''Człowiek w czasie i przestrzeni'' (1934) * ''Polska - Słowiańszczyzna. Perspektywy antropologiczne'' (1948) * ''Wstęp do historii Słowian, Poznań 1957'' * ''Człowiek w czasie i przestrzeni (third edition)'' (1967)

References

External links

Czekanowski's Diagram: a Method of Multidimensional Clustering
{{DEFAULTSORT:Czekanowski, Jan 1882 births 1965 deaths People from Grójec People from Warsaw Governorate Polish anthropologists Polish statisticians 20th-century anthropologists 20th-century Polish linguists Members of the Polish Ethnological Society Members of the Lwów Scientific Society Burials at Powązki Cemetery Recipients of the Medal of the 10th Anniversary of the People's Republic of Poland