Professor Michael Day
M.B.,B.S.,D.Sc.,F.C.S.P. (Hon.)
Founding President of the World Archaeological Congress

Professor Michael Day is Emeritus Professor of Anatomy, St. Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London University, United Kingdom. Hi research interests and publications are in the fields of primatology and palaeoanthropology principally on the interpretation of fossil hominid bones from Kenya and Tanzania found by the Leakey family. His work on postcranial remains such as the Olduvai Hominid 8 foot and the Olduvai Hominid 7 hand demonstrated that the Lower Pleistocene hominids were capable bipeds and possessed manipulative ability consistent with stone tool manufacture.

Professor Day undertook the Chairmanship of the Executive Committee of the first WAC meeting in Southampton when the British Executive Committee of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (I.U.P.P.S.) found itself unable to agree to host the meeting due to differences of opinion concerning the participation of South Africans while apartheid legislation was in place in that country. The success of the 1986 congress in Southampton assured the world-wide survival of the organisation that is now the World Archaeological Congress.