Melvin Joel Konner (born August 30, 1946) is an American anthropologist who is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and of Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University.

[1] Raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, Konner has stated that he lost his faith at age 17.

[2] He studied at Brooklyn College, CUNY (1966), where he met Marjorie Shostak, whom he later married and with whom he had three children.

He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1973 and a M.D.

[3][4] From 1985[5] on, he contributed substantially to developing the concept of a Paleolithic diet and its impact on health, publishing along with Stanley Boyd Eaton,[6][7] and later also with his wife Marjorie Shostak[8] and with Loren Cordain.