Murray Last dating history

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Denis Murray Last (born 1937) is a British historian and medical anthropologist, known for his pioneering research on northern Nigeria and the anthropology of medicine. He and Adiele Afigbo were the first two individuals to be awarded a PhD by a Nigerian university, completing his doctorate at University College Ibadan with research on the Sokoto Caliphate. His thesis was later published as The Sokoto Caliphate (1967), an influential work that reshaped understanding of 19th-century Islamic west Africa through its extensive use of primary sources, mostly written in Classical Arabic. Last is also recognised for his longterm ethnographic research on Hausa and Maguzawa medical cultures, introducing the concepts of "medical cultures" and "not knowing" in medical anthropology and ethnography. He served as sole editor of the Africa journal for 15 years (1986–2001) and is currently professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology, University College London.