APPLETON, WIS. — The remarkable career of Earnest Hooten, a 1907 graduate of what was then Lawrence College who became one of the country’s most prominent cultural anthropologists, will be examined in a Lawrence University Science Hall Colloquium.
Eugene Giles, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Illinois, presents “Penterating Insight and Malice: E. A. Hooten and American Physical Anthropology” Tuesday, April 10 at 4:30 p.m. in Science Hall Room 102. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Born less than 20 miles from Appleton, Hooten was one of the country’s first Rhodes Scholars. After earning a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence, he completed his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin before spending three years at Oxford University on his Rhodes scholarship, where his academic interests shifted from classics to anthropology.
Hooten began a distinguished teaching career in 1913 at Harvard University, where he spent more than 40 years on the faculty. His research focused on early man and primates and he was the author of a half dozen books, including “Ancient Inhabitants of the Canary Islands,” “Up from the Ape,” and “Apes, Men and Morons.” Fifty years ago, the Post-Crescent hailed Hooten, who died in 1954, as “Lawrence’s most famous native son.”
Giles, a former president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, was a member of the Illinois anthropology department from 1964-99. He also spent four years teaching at Harvard during that time.
His research interests focused on the origin and diversity of the indigenous populations of Melanesia. He also has conducted genetic research in Yucatan and osteological research in Australia, where he was twice a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
Since retiring from active teaching, his research has centered around the history of physical anthropology in the United States, of which Hooton was a dominant figure.
