Meredith Francesca Small (born 20 November 1950) is a Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Cornell University and popular science author.
She has been widely published in academic journals, and her research is presented in her most popular book: Our Babies, Ourselves.
She worked in the anthropological genetics laboratory of David Glenn Smith and spent one year in France studying the mating and mother-infant behavior of Barbary macaques.
Small began writing extensively for the popular audience just before her move to Cornell, and by the 1990s, Small shifted into mainstream journalism, writing articles for such publications as Natural History, Discover magazine, Scientific American and New Scientist.
[4] In 2014, she published her first fiction book, the beginning of a series featuring detective Grace McCloud.