Yoel Rak

In 1972, Rak received a bachelor's degree in prehistoric archaeology from the Hebrew University. After earning his master's degree in 1975, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley. There, under the guidance of Sherwood L. Washburn, Tim D. White, and Francis Clark Howell, Rak completed his doctoral dissertation, The Morphology and Architecture of the Australopithecine Face, in 1981. Two years later, an edited version of his dissertation was published in New York by Academic Press as The Australopithecine Face. In 1981, Rak returned to Israel and was appointed as a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, where he became a full professor in 1991. From 2004 to 2008, he headed the Department of Anatomy and Physical Anthropology.^[4][5][6]

Yoel Rak studies human anatomy and evolution. He focuses on facial anatomy, jaw function, and the mechanics of walking upright.^[2][7][8]

Yoel Rak’s second area of research focuses on Neanderthal remains found in Israel. For a long period of time, this region was inhabited by Neanderthals migrating from the north while Homo sapiens was coming from the south.^[9] Both groups took turns living in the same caves.

Rak led several excavations and took part in projects such as the exploration of Amud Cave^[10](1990–1994) and Kebara Cave (1982–1990),^[11] where the southernmost evidence of a Neanderthal presence was identified.^[12][13] Since 1990, Rak has participated as the expedition’s anatomist for the Hadar project in Ethiopia. In 1992 he discovered the first complete skull of A. afarensis (AL444.2).^[14][15]

In 2008, Rak was elected as a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.^[16] In 1999, he was awarded the Igor Orenstein Chair for the Study of Aging at Tel Aviv University.^[17]