Robert Broom FRS[1] FRSE (30 November 1866 – 6 April 1951) was a British- South African medical doctor and palaeontologist.

[9] He established a medical practice in the Karoo region of South Africa, an area rich in therapsid fossils.

Smuts, exerting pressure on the South African government, managed to obtain a position for Broom in 1934 with the staff of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria as an Assistant in Palaeontology.

[10] In the following years, he and John T. Robinson made a series of spectacular finds, including fragments from six hominins in Sterkfontein, which they named Plesianthropus transvaalensis, popularly called Mrs. Ples, but which was later classified as an adult Australopithecus africanus, as well as more discoveries at sites in Kromdraai and Swartkrans.

Shortly before his death he finished a monograph on the Australopithecines and remarked to his nephew: Broom was a nonconformist and was deeply interested in the paranormal and spiritualism; he was a critic of Darwinism and materialism.

According to Broom "Much of evolution looks as if it had been planned to result in man, and in other animals and plants to make the world a suitable place for him to dwell in.

Their skulls were later sent to the medical school of the University of Edinburgh,[18] alongside a 7 month old foetus, from which Broom had removed the brain which he preserved separately.

All such typological racial classification schemes are discredited today, due to being based on vague criteria, resulting in the rigid categorization ultimately being arbitrary.

Anatomist Goran Štrkalj wrote that: "It is obvious that Broom's anthropological work was ... influenced by the racist stereotypes and prejudices of the day".

[17] Among hundreds of articles contributed by him to scientific journals, the most important include: Books Robert Broom is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of Australian blind snake, Anilios broomi,[19] the Triassic archosauromorph reptile Prolacerta broomi, the rhinesuchid amphibian Broomistega, the Permian dicynodont Robertia broomiana and millerettid Broomia and the aloe plant species Aloe broomii.