On November 15, 1947, Dr. George Grant MacCurdy was killed by an automobile while on his way to Florida. Although he was in his eighty-fifth year, his death came as a distinct shock to all who knew him. He had grown a little frail, perhaps, but he still had full possession of all his faculties and he retained to the full his enthusiasm for and his preoccupation with his chosen field of prehistory. There was a certain changeless quality about him which makes his loss all the more keenly felt.

Although originally a student of geology and biology, Dr. MacCurdy was so stimulated by the exhibit of the bones of Pithecanthropus at the International Zoological Congress held at Leyden in 1896 that he decided to devote himself exclusively to anthropology and prehistoric archaeology. During the following years his student days in the capitals of Europe channeled his major interests into the field of Old World archaeology, of which he became the leading exponent and authority outside of Europe.