Dr. John Randal Baker F.R.S. (1900-1984) was a biologist, physical anthropologist, and professor at the University of Oxford (where he was the Emeritus Reader in Cytology) in the mid-twentieth century. He is best remembered for his 1974 book Race , which attempts to classify human races in the same way that animal subspecies are classified.

Baker explores the nature of civilization, giving 23 criteria that can readily identify them. He explores relations between the physical/biological traits and the cultures of five civilizations. Based on these criteria, Baker declared that Mesoamerican societies such as the Aztecs and Maya were not civilizations, and that no indigenous civilizations ever arose in Africa, extremely controversial views that do not at all agree with conventional ideas about those regions. Baker rejected the methodological relativism that has characterized anthropology since the days of Franz Boas, instead going back to earlier ideas of biological determinism and cultural evolution.

Works

• Sex in man and animals ... with a preface by Julian S. Huxley, 1926
• Man and animals in the New Hebrides, 1929
• Cytological technique, 1933
• Biology in everday life, 1934
• Chemical control of conception, with a chapter by H. M. Carleton , 1935
• Scientific life, 1942
• Science and the planned state, 1945
• Discovery of the uses of colouring agents in biological micro-technique, 1945
• Path of science, by C.E. Kenneth Mees ... with the cooperation of John R. Baker ... 1946
• Principles of biological microtechnique; a study of fixation and dyeing, 1958
• Cytological technique; the principles underlying routine methods, 1960
• Cell structure and its interpretation; essays presented to John Randal Baker, F.R.S. Edited by S. M. McGee-Russell and K. F. A. Ross, 1968
• Race, 1974
• Evolution : the modern synthesis by Julian Huxley ; with a new introd. edited by John R. Baker, 1974
• Freedom of science, 1975
• Julian Huxley, scientist and world citizen, 1887 to 1975 : a biographical memoir, with a bibliography compiled by Jens-Peter Green , 1978
• Biology of parasitic protozoa, 1982
• Cell theory : a restatement, history, and critique, 1988