Solly Zuckerman, Baron Zuckerman of Burnham Thorpe

Solly Zuckerman was born on May 30th 1904 in Cape Town, South Africa, the second child and eldest son of Moses and Rebecca Zuckerman, nee Glaser, themselves children of Jewish immigrants. He was educated at the South African College School and Cape Town University, where he studied medicine. In 1925 he travelled to England to undertake his clinical training at University College Hospital Medical School, London University. There the patronage of Sir Grafton Elliot Smith encouraged him to pursue his interest in primate evolution and behaviour, rather than to take up a career in medicine.

In 1928 Elliot Smith assisted the newly-qualified Zuckerman in securing his first appointment, as Prosector (Research Anatomist) to the Zoological Society of London, at the London Zoo in Regent's Park. He combined the job with research at University College then, in 1932, secured a Rockefeller Research Fellowship that enabled him to go to the United States to pursue his research into primate physiology at Yale University, under Dr John Fulton. He also spent a short period working with Dr Robert Yerkes at Yale's new Anthropoid Experimental Station at Jacksonville, Florida.

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