Joseph Deniker Joseph Deniker ( March 6 , 1852 , Astrakhan – March 18 , 1918 , Paris ) was a French naturalist and anthropologist , known primarily for his attempts to develop highly-detailed maps of race in Europe . Deniker was born in 1852 to French parents in Astrakhan , Russia . He first studied at the university and technical institute of St . Petersburg , where he adopted engineering as a profession , and in this capacity travelled extensively in the petroleum districts of the Caucasus , in Central Europe , Italy and Dalmatia . Settling at Paris , France in 1876 , he studied at the Sorbonne , where he received a doctorate in natural science in 1886 . In 1888 he was appointed chief librarian of the Natural History Museum in Paris . His complicated maps of European races , of which he sometimes counted upwards of twenty , were widely referenced in his day , if only to illustrate the extremes of arbitrary racial classification . In the late 19th century and early 20th century he had an extensive debate with another racial cartographer , William Z. Ripley , over the nature of race and the number of races . At the time , Ripley maintained that Europe was composed of three racial stocks , while Deniker held there were ten European races ( six primary races with four subsidiary or sub-races ) . Deniker 's most lasting contribution to the field of racial theory was the designation of one of his races as la race nordique ( the Northern race ) . While this group had no special place in Deniker 's racial model , it would be elevated by the famous eugenicists and scientific racist Madison Grant in his Nordic theory to the engine of civilization . Grant adopted Ripley 's three-race model for Europeans , but disliked Ripley 's use of the `` Teuton '' for one of the races . Grant transliterated la race nordique into `` Nordic '' , and promoted it to the top of his racial hierarchy in his own popular racial theory of the 1910s and 1920s . Deniker 's `` Races de l'Europe '' from 1899 , including la race nordique . Deniker proposed that the concept of `` race '' was too confusing , and instead proposed the use of the word `` ethnic group `` instead , which was later adopted prominently in the work of Julian Huxley and Alfred C. Haddon . Ripley argued that Deniker 's idea of a `` race '' should be rather called a `` type '' , since it was far less biologically rigid that most approaches to the question of race . Deniker became one of the chief editors of the Dictionnaire de geographie universelle , and published many papers in the anthropological and zoological journals of France . In 1904 he was invited by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain to give the Huxley Memorial Lecture . He died in Paris in 1918 . Selected works Recherches anatomiques et embryologiques sur les singes anthropoides ( 1886 ) Etude sur les Kalmouks ( 1883 ) Les Ghiliaks ( 1883 ) Races et peuples de la terre ( 1900 ) The races of man : an outline of anthropology and ethnography ( 1900 ) References Arthur Keith and Alfred C. Haddon , `` Obituary : Dr. Joseph Deniker '' Man 18 ( May 1918 ) : 65-67 . Ashley Montagu , `` The Concept of Race , `` American Anthropologist 64 : 5 ( October 1962 ) : 919-928 . Categories : 1852 births | 1918 deaths | French anthropologists | French naturalists In other languages : Deutsch 