One of the post-World War II founders of modern human biology and physical anthropology, Gabriel Lasker has a well-established place int he history of science. Lasker pioneered the concept of plasticity in human biology in an article published in Science in 1969. That article has since become a classic and defines plasticity as the process of human adaptation to stressful environments by a series of modifications to the body during the course of physical growth and developments. This notion of plasticity forced the scientific community to reexamine the genetically fixed racial types that scientists relied upon.