Irven DeVore (October 7, 1934 – September 23, 2014) was an anthropologist and evolutionary biologist, and Curator of Primatology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
He later pursued his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago upon receiving the Danford Scholarship, which paid the full costs for his and his wife's, Nancy DeVore, graduate education.
Together they organized (despite their youth) an influential international conference called Man the Hunter, which included Claude Lévi-Strauss in cultural anthropology, Lewis Binford in archeology, and other experts in disciplines relevant to hunter-gatherer studies, a sub-field Lee and DeVore helped create.
Together they mounted a years-long, multidisciplinary project to study the way of life of the group known as the !Kung or Ju/'hoansi, involving a number of graduate students and visiting scientists.
DeVore, not one to shy away from controversy, was also an early enthusiast of the fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, fostering their development through mentoring and teaching as well as through interviews, lectures, debates, and writing for scientific and popular audiences.
He played an instrumental role in developing supplementary school curricula, one of which, "Man: A Course of Study" (MACOS) became a subject of Congressional debate because of its emphasis on evolution.
The son of an itinerant Methodist preacher in East Texas, DeVore had sold Bibles door-to-door for a time as a very young man, but when he became convinced of the validity of Darwin's theory, he taught and defended it with what many said was a compelling art of persuasion.
He taught in large lecture halls that were perennially full as well as in the smaller but influential "Simian Seminar," which met in his living room on Wednesday evenings, in his rambling, comfortable home on a quiet wooded street in Cambridge.
Through these seminars, the ideas of evolutionary biology rose to prominence as group selection (with regard to explaining behaviour) faded, albeit not directly through Irven's work.
"[2] He was an avid and widely published photographer, and his photos became part of the core collection of AnthroPhoto, an agency founded by his wife, Nancy DeVore, and now managed by his daughter, Claire.