Josiah Clark Nott, an American ethnologist, born in Columbia, S. C, March 31, 1804, died in Mobile, March 31, 1873. He graduated at the South Carolina college in 1824, took the degree of M. D. in Philadelphia in 1827, and was for two years demonstrator of anatomy to Dr. Physick, when he returned to Columbia and commenced practice. In 1835-'6 he studied medicine, natural history, and the kindred sciences in Europe, and after his return practised medicine in Mobile. Besides contributing many articles on professional and similar topics to medical journals, he published several ethnological works. Among these are " Two Lectures on the Connection between the Biblical and Physical History of Man " (8vo, New York, 1849); "The Physical History of the Jewish Pace" (Charleston, 1850): "Types of Mankind" (4to, Philadelphia, 1854); and "Indigenous Races of the Earth" (4to, Philadelphia, 1857). The last two were prepared in connection with Mr. George R. Gliddon. The object of these works is to refute the theory of the unity of the human race, by showing that the present types of mankind lived around the Mediterranean 3,000 years B.C, and that there is no evidence that, during the last 5,000 years, one type has been changed into another.

In 1857 Dr. Nott was called to the chair of anatomy in the university of Louisiana, but in 1858 established a medical college in Mobile, which was made a branch of the state university.