Richard B. Potts is a paleoanthropologist and has been the director of the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History's Human Origins Program since 1985.

He is the curator of the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian.

[2] In 1982 Potts received his doctorate in biological anthropology from Harvard University.

Prior to joining the Smithsonian Institution he taught at Yale University and was its Peabody Museum of Natural History curator of Physical Anthropology.

His focus is on how human adaptation and evolution were in response to continuous changes in their environment over time.