"If you sat him down with a tape recorder and he just told stories, you could make millions selling the tapes," Marshall says.

"You get the sense he's one of those people that's lived ten lifetimes in the amount of time he's been around," he adds.

DeVore has made sure that others enjoyed researching with him.

Anthropology Professor Richard W. Wrangham, who participated in a study of Pygmies in the Congo that DeVore directed, says DeVore refused to focus only on his own research while in the field.

"The essence of his working style is to create an environment in which people flourish," Wrangham says. "He does so by making life interesting and fun, and by bringing people with different kinds of ideas together."

Perhaps as a result of the attention he gives to others, many of those DeVore has taught are now among today's greatest minds in anthropology.

DeVore's past students include primatologist Sarah Hrdy, Robert Trivers, a prominent figure in evolutionary theory for the past three decades and John Tooby, a founder of evolutionary psychology.

"Probably more than anyone, he has had a series of very successful students who have gone on to become very famous," says Frank W. Marlowe, a Harvard behavioral ecologist who studies sex and mating systems.