Phillip Vallentine Tobias FRS (14 October 1925 – 7 June 2012)[1] was a South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

[2] He was also an activist for the eradication of apartheid and gave numerous anti-apartheid speeches at protest rallies and also to academic audiences.

In 1955, Tobias started his post-graduate research at the University of Cambridge, England, where he filled the position of Nuffield Dominion Senior Traveling Fellow in physical anthropology.

He also opened some 25 archaeological sites in Botswana during the French Panhard-Capricorn Expedition while conducting a biological survey of the Tonga People of Zimbabwe.

The Sterkfontein caves, which were already well known by his predecessor, Professor Raymond Dart, were used as a vehicle for introducing the second year anatomy students to anthropology and have seen the most sustained excavation of a single site in the world.

This site has yielded the largest single sample of Australopithecus africanus as well as the first known example of Homo habilis from Southern Africa.

He has received honorary degrees from seventeen universities and other academic institutions in South Africa, the United States of America, Canada and Europe.

[13] He held the positions of Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Honorary Professor of Palaeo-anthropology, Honorary Professorial Research Associate and Director of the Sterkfontein Research Unit, and Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York USA.