Dubois was born and raised in the village of
Eijsden,
Limburg, where his father, Jean Joseph Balthazar Dubois, an
immigrant from
Thimister-Clermont,
Liège,
Belgium, was an
apothecary, later the mayor. Interested in all phenomena of the world of nature, Eugène explored the "caves" ("
grotten", actually underground limestone mines) of
Mount Saint Peter and amassed collections of plant parts, stones, insects, shells, and animal skulls. From age 12-13 on, he attended school in the Limburg city of
Roermond, boarding with a family there and then he dropped out. In Roermond he attended lectures on
Charles Darwin's new theory of
evolution given by the German biologist,
Carl Vogt. Resisting his father's plan for him to train to follow in his footsteps, Dubois, encouraged by his teachers, decided in 1877 to study medicine at the
University of Amsterdam. While a student, he taught anatomy at both of the brand new (founded 1880) art schools housed at the
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (Amsterdam State Museum) the Rijksschool voor Kunstnijverheid (State School for Applied Arts) and the Rijksnormaalschool voor Teekenonderwijzers (State
Normal School for Drawing Instructors). In 1884 he completed his medical degree. He declined an offer from the
University of Utrecht of a position as a docent. Instead, at the invitation of his anatomy instructor,
Max Fürbringer, he decided to train as an academic. From 1881 to 1887 he studied comparative anatomy and became Fürbringer's assistant. In 1885 he investigated the larynx of vertebrates, which led him to develop a hypothesis of the evolution of this organ. Nevertheless, his chief interest was in human evolution, influenced by
Ernst Haeckel, who reasoned that there must be intermediate species between ape and human. Dubois contributed an article on
whale anatomy to a book by the Dutch zoologist,
Max Weber, and, inspired by the fresh discovery of new
Neanderthal fossils at the Belgian town of
Spy, he spent his vacation fossil hunting in the vicinity of his birthplace. In the Henkeput near the village of
Rijckholt, where a prehistoric flint mine had just been discovered in 1881, he found some prehistoric human skulls. Reasoning that the origins of the human species must be in the tropics, in 1887 he joined the Dutch army and arranged to be posted in the
Dutch East Indies (the Dutch colony that is now independent
Indonesia), to the dismay of his academic colleagues. With his wife and newborn daughter he moved to the colony to search for the missing link in human evolution. He was unalterably convinced there was only one missing link.
Hominid discoveries Between 1887 and 1895, Dubois searched at potential sites near rivers and in caves, first on the island of
Sumatra, then on the
Indonesian island of
Java. In 1891, Dubois discovered remains of what he described as "a species in between humans and apes". He called his finds
Pithecanthropus erectus ("ape-human that stands upright") or
Java Man. Today, they are classified as
Homo erectus ("human that stands upright"). These were the first specimens of early
hominid remains to be found outside of Africa or Europe. During this period Dubois carried out fieldwork at sites such as
Sangiran in
Central Java and
Trinil in
East Java.
Later years In 1897, the
University of Amsterdam awarded Dubois an honorary doctorate in botany and zoology, but he had to wait until 1899 for a professorship. In that year, he was appointed a professor in
geology, a function that did not keep him from his research in
anatomy. He was also (from 1897 until 1928) keeper of
paleontology, geology and
mineralogy at
Teylers Museum, where he also kept the
H. erectus remains. In 1919, he became member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Although the scientific debate slowly began to turn in his favour in the 1920s and 1930s, he died embittered in 1940. He was buried in unconsecrated ground on 16 December 1940 in
Venlo, "Algemene Begraafplaats", grave number NH2\26\-\BR. == Legacy ==