Frances J. White

Frances J. White is a British biological anthropologist, professor, and primatologist at the University of Oregon. As a behavioral ecologist, her research focuses on the evolution of primate sociality and social systems. She has studied the socioecology of the bonobo chimpanzee (''Pan paniscus'') for over 35 years at Lomako Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the foremost American authority on this species in the wild and has done extensive field research on the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzees. Her bonobo research examines why bonobos have evolved a very different social system compared to the closely related chimpanzee.

She graduated from Cambridge University, UK, with a BA in 1980, an MA in 1984, and a PhD from Stony Brook University, Department of Ecology and Evolution, New York in 1986. Her advisor at Stony Brook was Professor John Fleagle. In 2021, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology.

She was also the primary biological anthropologist in a NOVA documentary called ''The Last Great Ape''. Provided by Wikipedia