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Yoel Rak

Yoel Rak is an Israeli anatomist and paleoanthropologist, a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University known for his research on early human faces and on Neanderthals in Israel.

born 1946Research on the australopithecine faceFirst complete Australopithecus afarensis skullNeanderthal research in Israeli caves

Born: 29 June 1946, Berlin
Occupation: archaeologist, prehistorian, paleoanthropologist, university teacher

Yoel Rak was born in 1946 in Berlin

Yoel Rak was born in 1946 in a displaced persons camp in Berlin. His parents, Pinchas Rak and Hana Rechtman, were Holocaust survivors from Poland. The family moved to Israel in 1948, and he grew up in Ramat Gan and finished high school at the Hadassim youth village.

Interested in fossils since childhood, he began university studies in 1968 with a special program of prehistory, anatomy, geology and other fields. He received a bachelor's degree from the Hebrew University in 1972. After the Yom Kippur War he went to the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed his doctorate on the face of the australopithecines in 1981.

Back in Israel he became a lecturer at Tel Aviv University and later a full professor. He headed the Department of Anatomy and Physical Anthropology from 2004 to 2008. His research covers facial anatomy, jaw function and the mechanics of upright walking.

He took part in excavations at Kebara Cave and Amud Cave, which studied Neanderthal remains in Israel. Since 1990 he has served as anatomist of the Hadar expedition in Ethiopia, and in 1992 he found the first complete skull of Australopithecus afarensis. In 2008 he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.