Tom Harrisson: personal glimpses
This is a personal obituary by Professor Neville Haile commemorating Tom Harrisson, the British anthropologist and naturalist who died in 1976 at the age of 64.
Summary
Haile, who first encountered Harrisson through a 1949 BBC broadcast on the Kelabit people of Sarawak—a broadcast that prompted him to apply for a posting to Sarawak—recalls several personal episodes, including Harrisson’s dramatic courtroom demonstration that secured the acquittal of two Kelabit men wrongly convicted of murder (p. 145). He then surveys Harrisson’s major scientific contributions: the discovery of prehistoric remains at Niah Caves, the expansion of the Sarawak Museum, and ongoing research on birds, orangutans, and the rare lizard Lanthanotus (p. 145).
Haile characterises Harrisson as a complex, witty, and deeply passionate figure whose conservation work extended to his final public act, a plea for Malaysian forest preservation delivered at the invitation of the MBRAS weeks before his death (p. 146). He notes that Harrisson’s last administrative act concerning Sarawak was to convert his “Widows and Orphans Pension Fund” into a Trust for the Kelabit peoples, and laments that one who had survived wartime and exploration risks was killed in a road accident (p. 146).