Anthropologist. Napoleon Chagnon was probably one of the most famous, if controversial, anthropologists in the history of anthropology. At the University of Michigan, Chagnon took his first anthropology course and fell in love with it. He earned his BA, MA, and PhD in anthropology at the University of Michigan, where he ultimately held his first university teaching position. In 1964 Chagnon traveled into the Amazon rainforest on the border of Venezuela and Brazil to study the Yanomamö. Chagnon became the first outsider to contact numerous remote villages of the Yanomamö as he lived among them, learned their language, and came to love them. For approximately 20 years after his first trip into the Amazon, Chagnon lived in Yanomamö villages for months at a time nearly every year. He asked the Yanomamö so many questions that they affectionately nicknamed him "Shaki," which means "pesky bee." Anthropology professor John Tooby of the University of California at Santa Barbara said Chagnon "was a great scientist, but also he was one of the few great men I have known — he had an extraordinary amount of moral courage." Chagnon published wellmore than 100 academic papers and book chapters, five books and 21 documentary films. He had many of his stunning photographs of the Yanomamö featured in National Geographic Magazine over the years, and he won numerous awards for his historic documentary films about the Yanomamö. His 1968 monograph, Yanomamö: The Fierce People, sold over 1 million copies and became a celebrated work amongst students of anthropology. His last book, Noble Savages, was called "an epic" by renowned sociobiologist and Pulitzer Prize winner E.O. Wilson. After Chagnon's fame made him a target, and a lucrative one, in 2000, an ambitious author published a book largely about Chagnon, full of jaw-dropping false claims that made for exciting reading and made headlines. Chagnon was not a litigious man; he was a scientist, through and through. So he endured the distraction that resulted from the false claims rather than suing for libel. Chagnon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012, as one of the world's leading anthropologists. He and his beloved wife of almost 60 years, Carlene Badgero Chagnon, had two children and five grandchildren.