Alfred Cort Haddon

Alfred Cort Haddon (born May 24, 1855, London—died April 20, 1940, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.) was one of the founders of modern British anthropology. Virtually the sole exponent of anthropology at Cambridge for 30 years, it was largely through his work and especially his teaching that the subject assumed its place among the observational sciences.

Educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, he distinguished himself in comparative anatomy and zoology and in 1880 was appointed professor of zoology at the Royal College of Science, Dublin. His first book, Introduction to the Study of Embryology, appeared in 1887, followed by many papers on marine biology.

In 1888 Haddon went to the Torres Strait—the channel between New Guinea and Australia—to study marine biology but instead found himself irresistibly drawn to the indigenous people; thereafter, his interests lay in the study of human societies. He moved to the University of Cambridge in 1893 and began giving lectures in physical anthropology there. In 1898 he organized and led the Cambridge anthropological expedition to the Torres Strait Islands, New Guinea, and Sarawak, in which were worked out some of the basic techniques of anthropological fieldwork, in particular, the use of genealogies. On his return, Cambridge recognized his services by giving him a lectureship in ethnology, and his college awarded him a fellowship (1901). The Board of Anthropological Studies in Cambridge was instituted in 1904, and from 1909 to 1926 Haddon held the position of reader in ethnology at the university.

Haddon’s publications cover virtually every aspect of human social life, from the anthropology of art to problems of racism. Numbering more than 600, they include Evolution in Art (1895); Head-Hunters: Black, White and Brown (1901); Wanderings of Peoples (1911); and (with Sir J.S. Huxley) We Europeans (1936). He also published one of the earliest histories of anthropology, History of Anthropology (1910).