Earnest Albert Hooton (November 20, 1887, Clemansville, Wisconsin – May 3, 1954, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a U.S. physical anthropologist known for his work on racial classification and his popular writings such as the book Up From The Ape. November 20 is the 324th day of the year (325th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1887 (MDCCCLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Saturday (click on link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. ... May 3 is the 123rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (124th in leap years). ... 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ...   Settled: 1630 â€“ Incorporated: 1636 Zip Code(s): 02138, 02139, 02140, 02141, 02142 â€“ Area Code(s): 617 / 857 Official website: http://www. ... Motto: (traditional) In God We Trust (official, 1956–present) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington, D.C. Largest city New York City Official language(s) None at the federal level; English de facto Government Federal Republic  - President George W. Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence - Declared - Recognized... Physical anthropology, often called biological anthropology, studies the mechanisms of biological evolution, genetic inheritance, human adaptability and variation, primatology, primate morphology, and the fossil record of human evolution. ...

Hooton was educated at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. After earning his BA there in 1907, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, which he deferred in order to continue his studies in the United States. He pursued graduate studies in Classics at the University of Wisconsin where he received an MA in 1908 and a Ph.D. in 1911 on "The Pre-Hellenistic Stage of the Evolution of the Literary Art at Rome" and then continued on to England. He found the classical scholarship at Oxford uninteresting, but quickly became interested in anthropology, which he studied with R.R. Marrett, receiving a diploma in 1912. At the conclusion of his time in England, he was hired by Harvard University, where he taught until his death in 1954. During this time he was also Curator of Somatology at the nearby Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Lawrence University, located in Appleton, Wisconsin, is a private undergraduate college founded in 1847. ... Appleton is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, on the Fox River, 100 miles (161 km) north of Milwaukee. ... 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public university located in Madison, Wisconsin. ... 1908 (MCMVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... 1911 (MCMXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ... 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1636,[2] Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. ... The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ...

Hooton was known for combining a rigorous attention to scholarly detail combined with a candid and witty personal style. Henry Shapiro remembers that his lectures "were compounded of a strange, unpredictable mixture of strict attention to his duty to present the necessary facts... and of a delightful impatience with the restrictions of this role to which he seemed to react by launching into informal, speculative, and thoroughly entertaining and absorbing discussions of the subject at hand." As a result Hooton attracted a large number of students and established Harvard as a center for physical anthropology in the United States.

Many of Hooton's research projects were endebted to his training in physical anthropology at a time when this field consisted most of anatomy and focused on physiological variation between individuals. The 'Harvard Fanny Study', for instance, involved measuring buttock spread and buttock-knee lengths in order to design more comfortable chairs for the Pennsylvania railroad. A similar study on the restrictive shape of ball-turrets in the B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft was decisive in the creation of a mature applied physical anthropology in the United States. The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is an American four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed for the US Army Air Corps (USAAC). ...

Hooton was an advanced primatologist for his time. If the great Latin playwright Terence said “Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto” (“I am a man; nothing about men is alien to me”), Hooton, following and correcting him, used to say: “Primas sum: primatum nil a me alienum puto” (“I am a primate; nothing about primates is alien to me”), which today is the slogan of many friends of the Primates, human and non-human alike. Publius Terentius Afer, better known as Terence, was a comic playwright of the Roman Republic. ...

Hooton was also a public figure well-known for popular volumes with titles like Up From the Ape, Young Man, You are Normal, and Apes, Men, and Morons. He was also a gifted cartoonist and wit, and like his contemporaries Ogden Nash and James Thurber he published occasional poems and drawings that were eventually collected and published. Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet best known for writing pithy and funny light verse. ... James Grover Thurber (December 8, 1894–November 2, 1961) was a U.S. humorist and cartoonist. ...

Like many others of his time, he used comparative anatomy to divide humanity up into races — in Hooton's case, this involved describing the morphological characteristics of different 'primary races' and the various 'subtypes'. However, Hooton was one of the first researchers to subject his theories to extremely rigorous mathematical evaluation as well as openly admit the importance of exceptions to and overlap in his system. This article concerns the term race as used in reference to human beings. ...

Sources and further reading

• Birdsell, Joseph 1987. Some reflections on fifty years in biological anthropology in Annual Reviews of Anthropology 16(1):1-12.
• Krogman, Wilton 1976. Fifty years of physical anthropology: the men, the materials, the concepts, and the methods in Annual Reviews of Anthropology 5:1-14.
• Shapiro, H. 1954. Earnest Albert Hooton, 1887-1954 (obituary) in American Anthropologist 56(6): 1081-1084
• Garn, Stanley and Giles, Eugene. 1995. Earnest Albert Hooton, November 20 1887 - May 3 1954. Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America v. 68 167-180.