A memorial service has been planned to honor the late Dr. Gabriel Lasker, a professor emeritus of anatomy and adjunct professor of anthropology. Lasker, an internationally known and well-regarded anthropologist with a distinguished teaching career at Wayne State, died on August 27th at Harper Hospital in Detroit following complications from kidney disease. He was 90. A memorial will be held at 2 p.m. October 20 in The Birmingham Temple, 28611 W. 12 Mile Rd., Farminton Hills. Lasker was born in Yorkshire, England on April 29, 1912, but emigrated to the United States in 1914 at the beginning of World War I, with his parents Bruno and Margaret Lasker. Lasker earned a bachelor's degree in 1934 from the University of Michigan and pursued volunteer work following graduation, before joining his father in China, where he became fluent in Chinese and Japanese. He returned to the United States during World War II and pursued a graduate school degree at Harvard University. Lasker graduated from Harvard in 1945 with a Ph.D. in physical anthropology. He joined the faculty at Dr. Lasker was hired to teach anatomy in the School of Medicine at Wayne (later Wayne State) University. In 36 years teaching at Wayne State, he built an international reputation in physical and biological anthropology. A dedicated scientist, Dr. Lasker continued a rigorous program of research and publication after retiring in 1982. If anything, his productivity in publishing scientific articles and books increased, as in retirement he published more than 80 books, articles and reviews. His curriculum vita lists roughly 250 publications, with 161 dating to the period from 1936-1982. At the time of his death, he was working on several scientific articles, in various stages of completion. Gabriel Lasker is survived by his wife of 53 years, Dr. Bernice (Bunny) Kaplan, professor emeritus of anthropology at Wayne State, and three children: Robert Lasker of Detroit, Edward (Ted) Lasker of Beverly Hills, Michigan, and Anne Lasker of Grand Rapids, Michigan. His only grandchild, Wilson Eduardo Lasker, is seven years old. OBITUARY (Background Info) Gabriel Ward Lasker: 1912-2002 Gabriel W. Lasker, known for his work expanding the study of names and pedigrees into the realm of human genetics, died Tuesday, August 27 at Harper Hospital in Detroit. He was 90. The cause of death was complications of kidney disease, according to his family. Born April 29, 1912 in New Earswick, Yorkshire, U.K., Lasker was the offspring of exceptional parents. His father, Bruno Lasker, served as private secretary to B. Seebohm Rowntree, a prominent Quaker who owned the Rowntree Chocolate Company and was a progressive employer, sociologist, and philanthropist. Knowing that the elder Lasker was a German national, Rowntree arranged for Lloyd George-then Prime Minister of Great Britain-to help the family emigrate from England to the U.S. following the outbreak of hostilities at the beginning of World War I. Bruno Lasker is perhaps best known as the author of more than a dozen books, most on Southeast Asia. His "Peoples of Southeast Asia", 1944 and "Human Bondage in Southeast Asia", 1950 were standards in the field for many years. Dr. Lasker's mother, Margaret Ward Lasker, was an early proponent of women continuing to work professionally following marriage. She taught and conducted research in organic chemistry for much of her life. Nevertheless, Lasker's early academic career was far from stellar. He was an indifferent student in prep school and as an undergraduate. Gabriel Lasker was deeply influenced by his experiences as a young man. Following graduation from the University of Michigan in 1934, he did volunteer work for various social services. Though both of his parents were employed throughout the 1930s, these experiences let him learn much about the plight faced by those who were economically displaced during the Great Depression. The following year (1935)-still unemployed himself-Lasker received a letter from his father, who was in China working for the Institute of Pacific Relations, an internationalist "think tank." Responding to the suggestion from his father that by learning Chinese or Japanese he need never be out of work, he sent a letter saying that he was coming to China to learn the language. He then embarked immediately, before there could be time for a reply telling him not to come. While in China, Lasker not only studied Chinese, but eventually landed jobs teaching English in the YMCA and in the government university that trained executives for the national railway. Away from work, he socialized primarily with Western intellectuals studying and residing in China. Through these contacts, Lasker made the connections at the Peking Union Medical College that later led to his choice of graduate studies and scareer. In his memoir, Dr. Lasker noted that, "I took up graduate studies in anthropology because I had not studied it previously and thus had no bad grades in the subject." Nonetheless, after receiving "glowing" letters of recommendation from anatomist Paul H. Stevenson and social psychologist Otto Klineberg, both of whom he had met while in China, he was accepted into Harvard's graduate program in physical anthropology despite his record as an undergraduate. Dr. Lasker chose to become a conscientious objector during World War II, based on pacifist views he had held since high school and his belief that military victories could not lead to adequate solutions to the world's problems. He registered himself for CO status, and stuck to it when his draft number came up. In this capacity he held a number of jobs during the war years, including work in a Civilian Public Service camp, as a volunteer research supervisor and subject for an experiment on insecticides and body lice, as a solitary fire lookout near Carson City, Nevada, and, for the last two years of the war, as an attendant in the hospital psychiatry ward at Duke University. Dr. Lasker remained committed throughout his lifetime to the struggle for world peace. After completing his Ph.D. at Harvard in 1945, Dr. Lasker was hired to teach anatomy in the School of Medicine at Wayne (later Wayne State) University. In 36 years teaching at Wayne State, he built an international reputation in physical and biological anthropology, retiring as Emeritus Professor of Anatomy and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology. In his field, he is probably best known for his studies on human adaptability and human genetics. Dr. Lasker's reputation was enhanced by the publication of an article in Science in 1969 on human biological adaptability that propounded a theory of human "plasticity." Plasticity, as set forth by Lasker and others, took issue with the earlier theory of fixed racial "types." A profoundly anti-racist view of human evolution, plasticity explains human variability as the result of a series of morphological adaptations to environmental changes toward more favorable evolutionary forms. During his time in North Carolina during WWII, Dr. Lasker learned a great deal about what went into editing a scientific journal, and about many scientific fields of which he had no direct knowledge. He was assigned the task of editing author abstracts for the Biological Abstracts of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and of supplying abstracts for the many papers submitted without them. He later put these experiences to good use as editor of Human Biology for more than 30 years. Dr. Lasker also wrote several books, including the college textbooks "The Evolution of Man: A Brief Introduction of Physical Anthropology" (1961) and "Physical Anthropology" (1973), as well as "Human Evolution: Physical Anthropology and the Origin of Man" (1963), which was used as a high school introductory text. More recently, he co-edited the Cambridge University Press series titled "Cambridge Studies in Biological Anthropology;" several books in this series bear his name as co-author or editor. His most recent book is his autobiographical memoir, "Happenings and Hearsay", which was published in 1999 by Savoyard Press, an imprint of the Wayne State University Press. A dedicated scientist, Dr. Lasker continued a rigorous program of research and publication after retiring in 1982. If anything, his productivity in publishing scientific articles and books increased, as in retirement he published more than 80 books, articles and reviews. His curriculum vita lists roughly 250 publications, with 161 dating to the period from 1936-1982. At the time of his death, he was working on several scientific articles, in various stages of completion. In later life he began to focus on studies tracing human genetics and historical migration, initially using records on marriages and baptisms from churches in rural and urban communities in Italy, Great Britain, and other parts of the world. These studies helped introduce the idea of studying human genetic movements through the phenomenon of "isonymy," or same-namedness. While the study of isonymy began as early as 1875 with a paper by George Darwin (Charles Darwin's son), it was Dr. Lasker and his colleagues who popularized the method of studying human names throughout the generations and across geographic distances. They used this study as a practical parallel (and model) for tracking the inheritance of genetic material (since surnames are passed from fathers to their offspring in a manner generally analogous to that of genes). One of his colleagues went so far as to dub Lasker "the father of modern isonymy research." Dr. Lasker won the Charles Darwin Award of the American Association of Physical Anthropology in 1991 and the Franz Boas award in 1996 from the Human Biology Association. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the University of Turin, one of the world's oldest universities, in 2000. He was also inducted into the Wayne State University Academy of Scholars in 1981. Gabriel Lasker is survived by his wife of 53 years, Dr. Bernice (Bunny) Kaplan, professor emeritus of anthropology at Wayne State, and three children: Robert Lasker of Detroit, Edward (Ted) Lasker of Beverly Hills, Michigan, and Anne Lasker of Grand Rapids, Michigan. His only grandchild, Wilson Eduardo Lasker, is seven years old. A memorial will be held at 2 p.m. October 20 in The Birmingham Temple, 28611 W. 12 Mile Rd., Farminton Hills. The family asks that donations in lieu of flowers be made to one of the following charities: "¢ The Council for a Livable World "¢ Southern Poverty Law Center "¢ Union of Concerned Scientists "¢ War Resisters League "¢ Ploughshares Fund