Charles Kimberlin Brain, also known as C. K. 'Bob' Brain, is a South African paleontologist who has studied and taught African cave taphonomy for more than fifty years.
Biography
From 1965 to 1991, Brain directed the Transvaal Museum, which became one of the most scientifically productive institutions of its kind in Africa during his tenure. During his years at the Museum, Brain actively pursued his own research, which was A-rated by the Foundation for Research Development from the inception of its evaluation system in 1984 until his retirement. Brain planned and scripted the displays in the Museum's "Life’s Genesis I" and "Life's Genesis 2" halls, which have been seen by several million visitors. Very early in Brain's career, Robert Ardrey wrote of him: Although Brain retired in 1996, he is active as Curator Emeritus at the Transvaal Museum, an Honorary Professor of Zoology at the University of the Witswatersrand, an active Research Associate at the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Palaeo-Anthropology Scientific Trust. He is an active researcher of fossils of the earliest animals and is co-ordinating a renewed excavation initiative at the Swartkrans Cave. He is a consulting editor for the Annals of the Eastern Cape Museums. In its 2006 Lifetime Achiever tribute to Brain, the National Research Foundation of South Africa said: Brain has been an invited participant at over thirty international conferences and symposia worldwide. He and his wife have four children. A species of legless lizard, Typhlosaurus braini, is named in his honour.
"Swartkrans: A Cave’s Chronicle of Early Man." 2nd Edition. Transvaal Museum Monograph No. 8, 1–295, 2005.
"Fifty years of fun with fossils: some cave taphonomy-related ideas and concepts that emerged between 1953 and 2003." In African Taphonomy: A Tribute to the Career of C.K. "Bob" Brain. Edited by Travis Pickering, Katherine Schick, and Nicholas Toth, Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology, Stone Age Institute, Indiana University Bloomington, 2004.
In A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries that Changed Science and the World, Laura Garwin and Tim Lincoln, editors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Hardcover:. Paperback:.
