The study of body composition has had and continues to have a central place in the field of human biology. Variations in body size, shape, and composition are well documented, as is the fact that size per se is no guarantee of the quantity or distribution of specific tissues within in the body.
The study of body composition over the past 25 years or so has been driven in part by technological advancements that have enhanced our abilities to partition the body mass. The more traditional approaches, i.e., cadaver analysis, anthropometry, densitometry, and so on, are now complemented by more refined techniques, e.g., in vivo neutron activation analysis and imaging techniques.
Given the importance of body composition assessment in the many applications of human biology to the study of human variation in health and disease, this number of the Journal attempts to link the past and present. The opening article is a personal reflection on his career by Josef Broz หek, to whom this number of the Journal is dedicated. His contributions to the study of body composition and to human biology in general are many.
Two historical papers provide, respectively, a chronology of the historical roots and trends in body composition research, and a summary of the available dissection data for 31 men and 20 women. Of course,