Vincent Sarich

Vincent M. Sarich (born 1934) is an American anthropology professor.

Born in Chicago, he received a bachelor of science in chemistry from Illinois Institute of Technology and his masters and doctorate in anthropology from University of California, Berkeley. He was a member of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford from 1967 to 1981, and taught at UC Berkeley from 1966 through 1994.

Along with his PhD supervisor Allan Wilson, Sarich measured the strength of immunological cross-reactions of blood serum albumin between pairs of creatures, including humans and African Apes (chimpanzees and gorillas). The strength of the reaction could be expressed numerically as an Immunological Distance, which was in turn proportional to the number of amino acid differences between homologous proteins in different species. By constructing a calibration curve of the ID of species' pairs with known divergence times in the fossil record, the data can be used as a "molecular clock" to estimate the times of divergence of pairs with poorer or unknown fossil records. In 1967, Sarich and Wilson published a seminal paper in "Science" that estimated the divergence time of humans and apes as 4 to 5 million years ago, at a time when standard interpretations of the fossil record gave this divergence as at least 10 to as much as 30 million years. Subsequent fossil discoveries, notably "Lucy", and reinterpretation of older fossil materials, notably Ramapithecus, showed the younger estimates to be correct and validated the albumin method. Application of the molecular clock principle revolutionized the study of molecular evolution.

Sarich's later work on race strengthened his reputation as a controversial figure. He applied his earlier work to racial differentiation, which he sees as the beginnings of speciation, arguing that the smaller the amount of time required to create a given number of morphological difference, the more selectively significant the differences become.

In 1994, Sarich was a signatory of a collective statement titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal. Sarich also wrote a favorable review of The Bell Curve.

He currently lectures in anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Selected publications

 * Sarich VM, Wilson AC. Immunological time scale for hominid evolution. Science 158, 1967, p. 1200-1203.
 * Sarich VM, Miele F. Race: The Reality of Human Differences. Westview Press (2004). ISBN 0-8133-4086-1
 * Sarich VM. The Final Taboo. Skeptic (Altadena, CA) January 1, 2000. Volume: 8 Issue: 1 Page: 38
 * Sarich VM, Dolhinow P. Background for man; readings in physical anthropology ASIN: B00005VHM2
 * Zihlman, Adrienne L., John E. Cronin, Douglas L. Cramer, and Vincent M. Sarich. (1978). Pygmy chimpanzee as a possible prototype for the common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. Nature 275: 744-746.
 * Zihlman, L., John E. Cronin, D.L. Cramer, and Vincent M. Sarich, Pygmy Chimpanzee as a Possible Prototype for Common Ancestor of Humans, Chimpanzees and Gorillas. Nature.
 * Marks, Jon, Carl W. Schmid, and Vincent M. Sarich, (1988). DNA hybridization as a guide to phylogeny: Relations of the Hominoidea. Journal of Human Evolution, 17: 769-786.