Saturday, October 22, 2011

David Stuart- Mayanist

At age 18, David Stuart was the youngest person to ever receive the MacArthur Award, which is more popularly known as the "genius award". Though Stuart was a very smart man, he had an advantage over other people working in the same field as him because he was exposed to the subject at a very young age. His father was the son of a Mayanist scholar and went on excursions with him from the time he was 8 years old. He would study the glyphs, draw them, and help decipher their meanings. He went on a trip with Linda Schele at age 12 and afterward wrote a scholarly article about his findings, which led to his receiving the MacArthur in 1984. Later, he earned his Ph.D in Anthropology at Vanderbilt University in 1995 and later taught at Harvard University. He has published many papers and books since then and still does work with the glyphs today. He is an incredibly smart man who made huge contributions to our knowledge of Mayan hieroglyphs.

No comments:

Post a Comment