Alan Cyril Walker (23 August 1938 – 20 November 2017)[1][2][3] was the Evan Pugh Professor of Biological Anthropology and Biology at the Pennsylvania State University and a research scientist for the National Museum of Kenya.

[6] Walker was a member of the team led by Richard Leakey responsible for the 1984 discovery of the skeleton of the so-called Turkana Boy,[7] and in 1985 Walker himself discovered the Black Skull[8][9] near Lake Turkana in Kenya.

During the award ceremony, Terry Pratchett, chairman of the judges, said "We were fascinated by the way the forensic net was spread out, bringing so many sciences to bear on the mystery of this million-year-old teenager."

[12] He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996,[13] and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999.

[15][16] In 2017 he received the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.