During his life he was widely considered a leading authority on primate taxonomy,[2][4] but is perhaps most famous to the general public for his research on Bigfoot.
Napier was an orthopedic surgeon at the University of London before being invited by Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark to join him in his paleoanthropology research.
[1] Napier then dedicated his life afterward to primatology, becoming the founder of the Primate Society of Great Britain, and was among the group, with Louis Leakey and Philip Tobias, that named Homo habilis in the 1960s.
[5] Napier later became Director of the Primate Biology Program at the Smithsonian Institution, where he examined the famous purported footage of Bigfoot, the Patterson–Gimlin film.
[7] However, Napier judged the indirect evidence – especially footprints – as compelling and intriguing enough to avoid dismissing the subject as entirely unworthy of serious study.