Peter S. Rodman is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis in the Department of Anthropology.
His specialty while a professor there was in the field of physical anthropology and paleontology, and the study of orangutans and their behavior and ecology in particular, although he has also authored or co-authored works on woolly monkeys, on bipedal locomotion in chimpanzees, and reproduction in bonnet macaques .
While a professor at UC Davis, Rodman also became known for waging a "one-man battle" to toughen the campus smoke-free policy,[2] Rodman has nearly 50 research publications in the field of physical anthropology, and as of 2018[update] his works have been cited more than 2000 times.
The article, "Orangutans: Sexual Dimorphism in a Solitary Species", coauthored by Rodman and John Mitani, is widely considered among primatologists as a definitive publication on sexual dimorphism among orangutans, for whom this characteristic is an extreme one.
[3] Rodman spent a total of 3½ years in eastern Borneo between 1969 and 1983 studying this species of ape.