2008 Guest of Honor Dr. Bill Bass (Jefferson Bass)

Dr. Bill Bass (Jefferson Bass)

Dr. Bill Bass is a world-renowned Forensic Anthropologist.  He is the author or co-author of more than two hundred scientific publications, as well as a critically acclaimed memoir about his career, Death's Acre.  He is also a dedicated teacher, honored as National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.Bill is among the most famous Americans in his field, which is the use of physical anthropology to resolve medical and criminal matters about the dead. He is the former director and founder of the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center (FAC), a two-acre compound known colloquially as "The Body Farm", where human remains are left to decay in various natural and controlled environments.  At the FAC, the world's only laboratory devoted to the study of human decomposition, Bill’s research has helped provide the basis that allows crime scene investigators to determine, among myriad other details, the cause of death in cases where police are working with victims' skeletal remains, or the time of death.Jon Jefferson (the other half of Jefferson Bass) is a veteran journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. His writings have been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today, and Popular Science and broadcast on National Public Radio. The coauthor of Death's Acre, he is also the writer and producer of two highly rated National Geographic documentaries about the Body Farm.