John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury (1834 to 1913), was an English banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist and polymath who made lasting contributions to archaeology, ethnography and several branches of biology while working in his family's bank. He coined the terms Palaeolithic and Neolithic for the Old and New Stone Ages and helped establish archaeology as a scientific discipline, and in his book The Origin of Civilisation (1870) he set out a Darwinian-type theory of human nature and development that shaped the evolutionary anthropology of his day. He served as president of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland from 1871 to 1872. Outside scholarship he introduced the first law for the protection of the country's archaeological and architectural heritage, the Ancient Monuments Act of 1882, and promoted the bank holidays first introduced in 1871.