An anatomy assistant under the Dutch morphologist Max Furbringer, Eugène Dubois knew little of the science of paleoanthropology --the study of the fossil remains of humankind's ancestors--when, in 1887, he decided flatly that he would devote his scientific efforts to the search for Charles Darwin 's proposed "missing link". His unearthing of Java man, near the village of Trinil on Java, was the first fossil discovery of Homo erectus, a direct ancestor of modern man, and the first deliberate search for man's fossil ancestors. Despite the controversy surrounding his discovery, Dubois worked at his research on the growth relationship between brain and body size and conducted investigations into the climate of the geologic past.

On January 28, 1858, Marie Eugène Francoise Thomas Dubois was born into the family of Jean Joseph Balthasar Dubois and Maria Catharina Floriberta Agnes Roebroeck at Eijsden in the province of Limburg, Netherlands...