The history of anatomy extends from the earliest examinations of sacrificial victims to the sophisticated analyses of the body performed by modern anatomists and scientists. Written descriptions of human organs and parts can be traced back thousands of years to ancient Egyptian papyri, where attention to the body was necessitated by their highly elaborate burial practices.
Terminologia Anatomica is the international standard for human anatomical terminology. It is developed by the Federative International Programme on Anatomical Terminology, a program of the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists (IFAA).
Keith Leon Moore was a professor in the division of anatomy, in the faculty of Surgery, at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Moore was associate dean for Basic Medical Sciences in the university's faculty of Medicine and was Chair of Anatomy from 1976 to 1984. He was a founding member of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) and was President of the AACA between 1989 and 1991.
Ross Granville Harrison was an American biologist and anatomist credited for his pioneering work on animal tissue culture. His work also contributed to the understanding of embryonic development. Harrison studied in many places around the world and made a career as a university professor. He was also a member of many learned societies and received several awards for his contributions to anatomy and biology.
Edmund Slocum Crelin, Jr. Ph.D. D.Sc (1923–2004) was Professor of Anatomy at Yale University from 1968 to 1991.
Harold Cummins M.D. was an anatomist and dermatoglyphics specialist. He is considered to be the founder of dermatoglyphics.
Ewald Rudolf Weibel HonFRMS was a Swiss anatomist and physiologist and former director of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Bern. He was one of the first scientists to describe the endothelial organelles Weibel–Palade bodies, which are named after him and his Romanian-American colleague George Emil Palade. He was known for his work on the anatomy of gas exchange in lungs on multiple spatial scales using stereology.
William Montague Cobb (1904–1990) was an American board-certified physician and a physical anthropologist. As the first African-American Ph.D in anthropology, and the only one until after the Korean War, his main focus in the anthropological discipline was studying the idea of race and its negative impact on communities of color. He was also the first African-American President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. His career both as a physician and a professor at Howard University was dedicated to the advancement of African-American researchers and he was heavily involved in civil rights activism. Cobb wrote prolifically and contributed both popular and scholarly articles during the course of his career. His work has been noted as a significant contribution to the development of the sub-discipline of biocultural anthropology during the first half of the 20th century. Cobb was also an accomplished educator and taught over 5000 students in the social and health sciences during his lifetime.
Jeffrey Todd Laitman is an American anatomist and physical anthropologist whose science has combined experimental, comparative, and paleontological studies to understand the development and evolution of the human upper respiratory and vocal tract regions. He is a Distinguished Professor of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City where he holds other positions, including Professor and Director of the Center for Anatomy and Functional Morphology, Professor of Otolaryngology and Professor of Medical Education.
Amy Elizabeth Adams was an American zoologist and professor at Mount Holyoke College.
Miriam Elizabeth Simpson was an American scientist who in 1921 earned the first Ph.D. in anatomy conferred from the University of California. Two years later, she was awarded Doctor of Medicine from Johns Hopkins University (1923).
AD (Bud) Craig, Jr. was an American neuroanatomist and neuroscientist.
Susanna Phelps Gage (1857–1915) was an American embryologist and comparative anatomist. She initially worked on the anatomy of small animals and humans, later shifting into neurology to study the embryological development of the brain and the anatomy of the human nervous system. She also developed a new and widely adopted method for making anatomical teaching models out of paper rather than wax. Although Susanna Phelps Gage was a respected embryologist and comparative anatomist, her work was often ignored. Like most other women scientists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who were married to scientists, Gage's research was often viewed as a mere adjunct to her husband's projects.
Charles Rupert Stockard (1879–1939) was an American anatomist and zoologist.
Susan Standring, PhD, DSc, MBE (2015), is a neuroscientist, editor-in-chief of Gray's Anatomy, and professor emeritus of experimental neurobiology, former head of Division of Anatomy, Cell and Human Biology, Guy's King's and St. Thomas' School of Biomedical Sciences, King's College London, London. President of the Anatomical Society for 2008–2010. In addition to educating medical and dental students in anatomy for over forty years, Standring has led an extensive research career, publishing over 150 papers.
Valerie Dean O'Loughlin is Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, Bloomington, co-author of two anatomy textbooks, now in their 3rd and 5th editions, and a Fellow of the American Association of Anatomists.
Lynne A. Opperman is an American researcher. Prior to the start of the 2021–22 academic year, Opperman was named interim dean of the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry.
Kathy Kay Hartford Svoboda is an American biologist.
William Frederick Windle was an American anatomist and experimental neurologist.
