Weissenberg, Samuel Abramovich
WEISSENBERG, SAMUEL ABRAMOVICH
WEISSENBERG, SAMUEL ABRAMOVICH (1867–1928), Russian physician and anthropologist. He was born in Elizavetgrad in the Ukraine. After Cesare *Lombroso, Weissenberg was perhaps the most distinguished of that first generation of Jewish anthropologists who became interested in Jewish ethnic and physical characteristics. For his anthropometric research on the Jews of southern Russia, which was published in Archiv fuer Anthropologie in 1895, he was awarded a gold medal by the Moscow Society for Natural Sciences. His research culminated in his book Wachstum des Menschen nach Alter, Geschlecht und Rasse ("Growth of Man as Related to Age, Sex, and Race," 1911). Weissenberg traveled extensively, amassing material for anthropological studies of the Jews of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, North Africa, and Yemen, as well as of various Karaite communities. Many of his essays on Jewish folklore, proverbs, and folk music were published in the influential journal Globus.
bibliography:
Wininger, Biog, 6 (1925), 249–50, includes bibliography; Rejzen, Leksikon, 1 (1926), 973–5.
[Ephraim Fischoff]