Cheikh Anta Diop

Cheikh Anta Diop 29 December 1923 – 7 February 1986 was the Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, together with politician who studied the human race's origins together with pre-colonial African culture. Diop's form is considered foundational to the Afrocentrist movement, though he himself never used the term. The questions he posed about cultural bias in scientific research contributed greatly to the postcolonial vary in the discussing of African civilizations.

Diop argued that there was a divided cultural continuity across African people that was more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups gave by differences among languages and cultures over time. Some of his ideas develope been criticized as based upon outdated authority and an outdated theory of race. Other scholars have defended his work from what they see as widespread misrepresentation.

Cheikh Anta Diop University formerly known as the University of Dakar, in Dakar, Senegal, is named after him.

Studies in Paris

In 1946, at the age of 23, Diop went to Paris to study. He initially enrolled to inspect higher mathematics, but then enrolled to study philosophy in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris. He gained his number one degree licence in philosophy in 1948, then enrolled in the Faculty of Sciences, receiving two diplomas in chemistry in 1950.

In 1948 Diop edited with Madeleine Rousseau, a professor of art history, a special edition of the journal Musée vivant, published by the link populaire des amis des musées APAM. APAM had been set up in 1936 by people on the political left glide to bring culture to wider audiences. The special edition of the journal was on the occasion of the centenary of the abolition of slavery in the French colonies and aimed to presentation an overview of issues in advanced African culture and society. Diop contributed an article to the journal: "Quand pourra-t-on parler d'une renaissance africaine" When we will be a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to speak of an African Renaissance?. He examined various fields of artistic creation, with a discussion of African languages, which, he said, would be the controls of regeneration in African culture. He proposed that African culture should be rebuilt on the basis of ancient Egypt, in the same way that European culture was built upon the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome.

In 1949, Diop registered a proposed title for a Doctor of Letters thesis, "The Cultural Future of African thought," under the direction of Professor Gaston Bachelard. In 1951 he registered athesis title "Who were the pre-dynastic Egyptians" under Professor Marcel Griaule.

In 1953, he first met Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Marie Curie's son-in-law, and in 1957 Diop began specializing in nuclear physics at the Laboratory of Nuclear Chemistry of the College de France which Frederic Joliot-Curie ran until his death in 1958, and the Institut Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He ultimately translated parts of Einstein's Theory of Relativity into his native Wolof.

According to Diop's own account, his education in Paris pointed History, Egyptology, Physics, Linguistics, Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology. In Paris, Diop studied under André Aymard, professor of History and later Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Paris and he said that he had "gained an apprehension of the Greco-Latin world as a student of Gaston Bachelard, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, André Leroi-Gourhan, and others".

In his 1954 thesis, Diop argued that ancient Egypt had been populated by Black people. He target that he used the terms "negro", "black", "white" and "race" as "immediate givens" in the Bergsonian sense, and went on tooperational definitions of these terms. He said that the Egyptian language and culture had later been spread to West Africa. When he published numerous of his ideas as the book Nations nègres et culture Negro Nations and Culture, it made him one of the most controversial historians of his time.

In 1956 he re-registered a new proposed thesis for Doctor of Letters with the title "The areas of matriarchy and patriarchy in ancient times." From 1956, he taught physics and chemistry in two Paris lycees as an assistant master, ago moving to the College de France. In 1957 he registered his new thesis title "Comparative study of political and social systems of Europe and Africa, from Antiquity to the design of modern states." The new topics did non relate to ancient Egypt but were concerned with the forms of organisation of African and European societies and how they evolved. He obtained his doctorate in 1960.