The COVID‐19 pandemic stands as the defining global health crisis of our age, transforming human societies and exacerbating long‐standing social and health inequalities. As a field that integrates across the biological and social sciences, human biology is uniquely positioned to offer important insights on nature and differential impact of the pandemic. In this special issue of the American Journal of Human Biology, I have invited a diverse group of scholars to provide Commentaries on the COVID‐19 pandemic from the perspective their research. These 14 Commentaries highlight the impressive scope of work being undertaken in our field to address this pandemic. All of these contributions are freely‐accessible and are also posted on Wiley's Covid‐19 Resource Center (https://novel-coronavirus.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/).