Jan Czekanowski (October 8, 1882, Głuchów – July 20, 1965, Szczecin) was a Polish anthropologist, statistician, ethnographer, traveller, and linguist.

[1] Czekanowski played an important role in saving the Polish-Lithuanian branch of the Karaite people from Holocaust extermination.

In 1942, he managed to convince German "race scientists" that the Karaites were of Turkic origin although professing Judaism and using Hebrew as a liturgical language.

While working on studying the societies of Africa, he developed various statistical methods and contributed to the field of taxonomy.

He played numerous scientific roles at the University of Poznań, including vice-chairman of the Polish Social Statistic Company.

In the context of the racial theories of his time which have since been disproved by modern genetics,[3] Czekanowski classified Europeans into four pure races.