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EARNEST ALBERT HOOTON
November 20, 1887-May 3, 1954
BY STANLEY M. GARN AND EUGENE GILES
OVER FOUR DECADES Earnest Albert Hooton became known
nationally and internationally for his contributions to
the study of human evolution, for his comprehensive com-
parisons of nonhuman primates, and for his management
of mass-scale anthropometric studies both of skeletal popu-
lations and on the living. He also became well known to a
generation of newspaper readers for his pithy ant! often
irreverent comments on the human condition and for his
advocacy of a woman president. As an early exponent of
applied physical anthropology and human engineering,
Hooton was responsible for improvements in clothing siz-
ing, work space, and air frame and seating design. For years
Earnest Hooton was the principal source of graduate stu-
dents in physical anthropology and, through his students,
was responsible for much of the growth and direction of
the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Earnest Albert Hooton was born in Clemansville, Wis-
consin, on November 20, 1887, the third child and only son
of an English-born Methodist minister marries! to a Cana-
~lian-born woman of Scotch-Irish ancestry. Both parents
67
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68
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
emphasized learning ant! macle sure that all three Hooton
children went to college, despite the meager salary accorclec!
a clergyman. Besicles, Hooton's small size and myopia macle
him a scholar from the start "with my nose always stuck in
a book." Hooton also clemonstrated an ability for cartooning
at an early age, and he enlivened both his high school and
_ _ 11 _ _ _ _ ~ ·, ~
O —
college annuals wire cartoons en cl more serious artwork, a
skill he maintained for the rest of his sixty-six years.
Earnest Hooton graduates! from Lawrence College at the
~ . . .
age ot nineteen anct went on to the University of Wiscon-
sin, where he attained his Ph.D. degree in the classics, hav-
ing great proficiency in Latin and more skills in ancient
Greek. His 1911 Ph.D. thesis was titled "The Evolution of
Literary Art in Pre-hellenic Rome." With this eclucational
background and his outstanding academic record, he ap-
pliecl for en cl was awarder! a Rhocles scholarship, electing
to study at Oxford. There he moved in succession from
classical archeology to iron-age and Viking-periocI archeol-
ogy, assisting in the excavation of Viking boat burials en cl
description of the remains. At Oxford, under R. R. Marett,
Hooton turner! to anthropology, taking a diploma in gen-
eral anthropology in 1912. He then worked with Arthur
Keith, where he developed a lifelong interest in human
paleontology, especially paTeoanthropic fossils from Englanc!
and the continent.
With Marett's strong support, Hooton was offered a teach-
ing position at Harvard in 1913, en cl he remained there for
four clecacles. Besides teaching introductory physical an-
thropology and iron-age archeology, he busied himself with
descriptive analyses of skeletal remains, writing many acI-
clencia or technical notes to archeological reports and lec-
turing to alumni and professional groups on the relevance
of physical anthropology to medicine and dentistry.
Though clisquaTifiecl from military service because of his
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EARNEST ALBERT HOOTON
169
nearsightedness, requiring six diopters of correction, he
volunteered for training at the Civilian Military Training
Center at Plattsburgh, New York, becoming a passable rifle-
man at ~ 00 yards but a wild shot at greater distances. Hooton
also became involved in revising military recruitment stan-
dards, a necessity given the large number of smallish immi-
grants who could not qualify for service under the existing
dimensional requirements standards.
A RECORD OF RESEARCH
During the 1920s, Hooton moved on from his earlier
descriptions of individual skeletal remains found in the course
of archeological digs and isolated fossil crania (like the La
Quina skull) to metric and morphological analyses of large
skeletal assemblages, including the remains of the ancient
inhabitants of the Canary islands, originally collected in
1915. Studies on the remains from Pecos Pueblo, compris-
ing over 500 individuals of all ages, marked a turning point
in human skeletal biology, for the sample was large enough
to allow attention to age changes in this prehistoric skeletal
population, as well as a careful and detailed description of
such pathological conditions as osteoarthritis and rheuma-
toid arthritis, accomplished in conjunction with radiologists
and pathologists.
Chapter X of the Pecos report (Pathology) included a
detailed analysis of the age incidence and population preva-
lence of antemortem fractures (some 7 percent overall),
with the highest age incidence in the elderly. The Pecos
report also included appendixes on the dentition (by Habib
J. Rihan) and a separate chapter on the pelvis (by Edward
Reynolds). The entire study was facilitated by a sizeable
group of devoted laboratory and statistical assistants, in-
cluding Ruth O. Sawtell, who later wrote a series of popular
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
detective stories featuring human bones and skeletal icienti-
location.
During the ~ 930s, Hooton turner! his attention to
anthropometric surveys and anthropometric studies of liv-
ing human beings, including a very large series of criminals
measured in ten different states, and years later, an
anthropometric survey of the Irish. Such studies represented
a major management task, keeping track of workers at dis-
tant locations, a major accomplishment in ciata hancIling
(thousands of completecI anthropometric and observational
forms), ant! a major accomplishment in ciata analysis, macle
possible by the use of IBM puncher! carcis and the Holler-'
ith carcl sorter.
Though his criminal study (publishecl as The American
Criminal in 1939) was criticized as Lombroso-like in assum-
ing the existence of criminal types, Hooton clic! demon-
strate that different classes of felons differed substantially
in bocly' size and proportions, pickpockets being the small-
est and forgers being the tallest ant! best eclucatecI. Self-
selection and occupational selection clearly accounted! for
such climensional and proportional differences, as we have
since come to know also for different groups of Olympic
athletes.
Hooton also operates! an anthropometric booth at the
New York WorI(l's Fair, gathering novel (limensional data
on the visitors, and he was involved in annual anthropometric
studies on Harvard freshmen, extending investigations origi-
nally initiated by Dudiey Sargent at the turn of the century.
MILITARY AND CIVILIAN APPLICATIONS
In the course of his anthropometric studies, Hooton cle-
veloped a mode! for mass surveys ant! for ciata analysis us-
ing punched cards en cl card-sorting equipment locater! in
his statistical laboratory atop the Peabody Museum. This
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EARNEST ALBERT HOOTON
171
model proved especially applicable to mass data surveys re-
lating to equipment design, both civilian and military, which
Hooton helped organize and provided direction. As a re-
sult, many of Hooton's students became involved in ap-
plied human engineering with the Air Force (previously
the Army Air Corps), the Chemical Warfare Service (later
the Army Chemical Corps), and the Quartermaster Corps,
among others.
Gas masks, oxygen masks, aircraft seating, tank interiors,
military uniforms, ~suits, and tank helmets all became more
comfortable, better-f~tting, and more user friendly because
of Hooton's efforts and directions. it was his notion that
equipment and garments should fit the user, rather than
vice versa, and Hooton was a proponent of ergonomics long
before the term was coiner] by Le Gros Clark. Many of the
national and international nutrition surveys conducted well
after the midcentury mark also reflect Hooton's designs
and contributions, through the efforts of his students of an
earlier period.
Hooton also conducted an anthropometric study of com-
muters in Boston's North Station in order to develop more
comfortable train seats for the Heywood Wakef~eld Com-
pany, as described in A Survey of Seating (1945~. (Hooton's
principal assistant in that study later became the director of
the Kinsey Institute.) From such endeavors Hooton was able
to provide alternative employment for many of his students,
at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, for example, and at the
Quartermaster Laboratories in Natick, so that academia was
no longer the only source of jobs for physical anthropolo-
gists.
OTHER LITERARY CONTRIBUTIONS
Besides technical monographs and book-length research
reports (one over a thousand pages in length), Hooton also
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
wrote several introductory texts that were widely user! and
lasted through multiple revisions. Up from the A]ie (1931,
1946) was his best-known work, covering the scope anct range
of physical anthropology and providing detailed, illustrated
instructions on anthropometry. Man's Poor Relations (1942)
was the first comprehensive treatise on primates, primate
taxonomy, en c! primate behavior. Their titles were sufficiently
catchy to attract a wicle and appreciative audience, and they
were written in a friendly expository style so that students
found them pleasant reacting despite the wealth of techni-
cal material en cl the polysyllabic Greco-Latin names bestowed!
on in(livi(lual fossils and primate genera anti species.
Hooton also extenclec! his writing to popularizect accounts
of his own contributions (such as Crime and the Man), en c!
he was caller! upon to write a popular description of the
Grant study at Harvard University. Since the study was decli-
catec! to a biobehavioral understanding of normal college
unclergracluates, Hooton titled that popular work Young Man,
You Are Normal.
Hooton also penned cloggerel that has been likened to
the work of Ogden Nash. Some of these verses were in-
cluded in his scholarly texts, some fount! their way into his
popular works, and others were user! to enliven his cIass-
room lectures and the lectures he was invites! to give at
conventions and conferences. His Ode to a Dental Hygienist
was especially well received by dentists, who frequently in-
vitec! Hooton to serve as a clinner speaker. Some of Hooton's
more notable verses have been reprinted in volumes of po-
etry, anct a representative selection (with illustrations also
by Hooton) was reprinted posthumously uncler the title
Subverse ~ ! 961~ . Like Ogden Nash, Hooton made use of
unorthodox and surprising rhyme combinations.
Hooton became an accomplishecl cartoonist in his high
school and college days and returned to this skill in the
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EARNEST ALBERT HOOTON
173
second half of his academic career. Some cartoons enTiv-
ened his popular works, and a selection can be found in
.S~'h7Jer.sP, including his rather hilarious drawing of a Harvard
faculty meeting showing Conant at the dais and a back view
of Hooton himself lounging in the front row.
HOOTON AND HIS PH.D. STUDENTS
For three decades, 1920-50 approximately, Earnest Albert
Hooton was the major source of Ph.D. recipients in physi-
cal anthropology in the United States and indeed the world.
This preeminence in the supply side stemmed, in equal
parts, from Hooton's location in the Peabody Museum of
Harvard University, from the laboratory and statistical fa-
cilities he built, from his inspiring teaching, and from his
personality. The Department of Anthropology, in the Peabody
Museum, was rich in archeological and ethnological hold-
ings and had access to a remarkably complete research li-
brary, with Tong runs of scientific journals in many lan-
guages. The bone lab grew under Hooton and came to
include extensive primate collections as well as collections
of human skeletons from many parts of the world. Hooton
also expanded his statistics laboratory, beginning at the time
he participated in the Civilian Military Corps during World
War I, and with continuing cooperation of the International
Business Machines Corporation thereafter, thus providing a
facility for data reduction and data analyses without paral-
lel in the field.
Hooton excelled as a teacher, teaching all of the courses
n physical anthropology himself until the postwar expan-
sion of physical anthropology demanded additional course
offerings. With continuing programs of research, with ex-
peditions to staff, and (later) with commercial and military
projects, he was able to provide work-related training and
i
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74
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
financial support at a time when fellowships were scarce
anal uncommon.
Though a shy man in public, Hooton had a warm rela-
tionship with his graduate students, according each in turn
the feeling of being most favored. While many professors
doled out bits of research as thesis topics along their own
lines of interest, Hooton encouraged his graduate students
to look wicle in search of investigative problems and then
proviclec! advice and counsel in the course of data acquisi-
tion and thesis writing. As a result, Hooton's students were
diverse in their interests, some excelling in primate com-
parisons; some concentrating on prehistoric and protohistoric
skeletal remains and skulls; other working in nonulation
1 · 1 _1 ~ ~ . ~ ~ ~ . -
131010g~l, aemograpny, and tne secular Generational) changes
of Americans or immigrant populations; ant! some in hu-
man genetics and histology.
Besides hour-Ion" student conferences of the formal sort,
Hooton hacI regular afternoon teas (especially on Satur-
ciays), which provided social interaction, good conversation,
and the opportunity to meet visitors from around the worIci.
Thus, along with jasmine tea and shortbread, Hooton's graclu-
ate students (anc! other graduate students in anthropology)
became acquainted! with a wider academic worIcI. As one of
his former students calculated, getting a Ph.D. degree with
Hooton incluclect twenty-three gallons of jasmine tea, six-
teen pounds of Scotch shortbread, and a surprising variety
of people.
Most of the cloctoral-level students produced by Hooton
went on to professional positions in physical anthropology,
thereby changing the composition of the American Associa-
tion of Physical Anthropologists, which hac! been largely
macle up of anatomists and clinicians at the time of its
inception. As their numbers grew, ant! as they gained in
academic status, Hooton's students came to dominate the
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EARNEST ALBERT HOOTON
175
AAPA for decades, eventually providing all of the elected
officers for years and the majority of the executive commit-
tee. Given this start and a long-term near-monopoly of gradu-
ate students, it is not surprising that many of Hooton's prod-
ucts were elected to the National Academy of Sciences,
including Baker, Garn, Howells, Hulse, Shapiro, and
Washburn.
HOOTON'S PLACE IN NATURE
It is difficult to evaluate Hooton or to rank him among
his peers for he held a unique position in physical anthro-
pology and was without parallel. Only Franz Boas at Colum-
bia and Ales Hrdlicka at the Smithsonian had comparable
stature and recognition in the scientific community.
Hooton's honors included membership in the National
Academy of Sciences, the Viking Fund Medal in Anthropol-
ogy (he was the second recipient), and an honorary degree
from Lawrence College. He was one of the founding mem-
bers of the American Association of Physical Anthropolo-
gists, serving as president from 1936 to 1938 and associate
editor of the American journal of Physical Anthropology from
1928 to 1942, working closely with Hrdlicka. Hooton was
also much esteemed as a guest lecturer and dinner speaker
at various professional conventions, including the NAACP.
Life magazine devoted a six-page spread to him under the
title "Hooton of Harvard" (Aug. 7, 1939, pp. 60-661.
Hooton was often quoted in daily newspapers and news
magazines, for his pithy comments were highly quotable.
That and some of the titles of his popular books (Apes, Men
and Morons, The Twilight of Man, etc.) did not sit well with
more conservative colleagues and publicity-averse members
of the Harvard faculty, including Harvard president James
Bryant Conant. Hooton's comments were much appreci-
ated by generations of Harvard undergraduates, however,
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BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
and his popular "Anthropology A" course was Tong well at-
tenclec! by premedical students, liberal arts majors, and so-
cialites alike. Lectures, according to Hooton, "need not be
the same as a steeping pill."
THE LAST YEARS
Though Hooton reached the official retirement age at
Harvarc! after his sixty-fifth year, he was invited to return by
a new anti more favorable administration at Harvarc! anct
happily resumed teaching introductory courses that had
clecreased in enrollment. He was actively teaching "Anthro-
pology 10" when he flier! unexpectedly of a vascular acci-
clent.
Shortly before his cleath, Earnest Hooton expressed a
desire to visit England once again to renew his acquain-
tance with Sir Arthur Keith, his old mentor and friend and
"hear his cheerful voice again." This was an unusual cleci-
sion on Hooton's part, for he cletestecI travel except to the
annual meetings of the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists, and his yearly treks to Pinehurst, North
Carolina, to play golf.
Hooton was survives! by his wife Mary Camp Hooton
whom he married in 1913, by two sons (Newton and Jay),
one daughter (Emma Hooton Robbins) and two grancichil-
dren. Though he tract agrees! to accept a doctor of letters
degree at the University of Wisconsin-Mactison, the award
was macle posthumously at the 1954 spring commencement.
Thereafter, an Earnest Albert Hooton professorship was es-
tablishec3 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and its
first incumbent was, fittingly enough, a pupil of a pupil of
Hooton's.
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EARNEST ALBERT HOOTON
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
1914
Note on the La Quina skull. Am. Anthropol. 16:267-68.
1916
177
The relation of physical anthropology to medical science. Medical
Review of Reviews. April, pp. 260-64.
1916
Preliminary remarks on the archaeology and physical anthropology
of Tenerife. Am. Anthropol. 18:358-65.
1917
Oral surgery in Egypt during the Old Empire. Harv. African Stud.
1 :29-32.
1918
On certain Eskimoid characters in Icelandic skulls. Am. I. Phys. Anthropol.
1 :53-76.
1925
The ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands. Haw. African Stud.
7:1-401.
The asymmetrical character of human evolution. Am. I. Phys. Anthropol.
8:125-41.
1928
Note on the anthropometric characters of the Yahgan and the Ona.
New York Museum of the American Indian Hey e Foundation Contribu-
tions 10:41-47.
1930
Doubts and suspicions concerning certain functional theories of
primate evolution. Hum. Biol. 2:223-49.
The Indians of Pecos Pueblo: A Study of Their Skeletal Remains. Papers of
the Southwestern Expedition No. 4. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
versity Press.
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178
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS
1931
Up from the Ape. New York: Macmillan Co.
1932
Preliminary remarks on the anthropology of the American crimi-
nal. Am. Philos. Soc. Pro c. 71:349-55.
1934
Apes, men and teeth. Sci. Mon. 38:24-34.
1935
Homo sapiens whence and whither. Sigma Xi Q. 23:6-24.
1936
An anthropologist looks at medicine. Science 83:271-76.
Plain statements about race. Science 83:511-13.
With E. Reynolds. Relation of the pelvis to erect posture: an explor-
atory study. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 21 :253-78.
1937
Apes, Men, and Morons. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Apology for man. Forum 97:332-38.
1939
The American Criminal: An Anthropological Study. Cambridge, Mass.
Harvard University Press.
Crime and the Man. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Twilight of Man. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
1940
Viny Men Behave Like Apes and Vice Versa; or, Body and Behavior. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Stature, head form, and pigmentation of adult male Irish. Am. J.
Phys. Anthropol. 26:229-49.
1942
Man's Poor Relations. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
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EARNEST ALBERT HOOTON
1943
Medico-legal aspects of physical anthropology. Clinics 1:1612-24.
1945
179
Young Man, You Are Normal: Findings from a Study of Students. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
A Survey of Seating. Gardner, Mass.: Heywood Wakef~eld Co.
1946
Up from the Ape. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan Co.
The science of the individual. In Serving Through Science, pp. 91-93.
The United States Rubber Company.
Anthropometry and orthodontics. Am. [. Orthod. Oral Surg. (Orth-
odontics Section) 32:673-81.
The evolution and Revolution of the human face. Am. I. Orthod.
Oral Surg. (Orthodontics Section) 32:657-72.
1951
With C. W. Dupertuis. Age Changes and Selective Survival in Irish Males,
eds. W. W. Howells and S. L. Washburn. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Edwards
Brothers, Inc.
1954
The importance of primate studies in anthropology. Hum. Biol. 26:179-
88.
1961
Subverse. Paris: Finisterre Press.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
earnest albert
