Biography

Alfred Cort Haddon (1855-1940), anthropologist, was born in London on 24 May 1855. He attended various schools in London including the City of London School in 1866 and Mill Hill School in 1867-8. After attending evening classes at King's College, London, he taught zoology and geology at a girls' school in Dover, and in 1875 Haddon entered Christ's College, Cambridge. In 1878 he obtained a first class in the natural sciences tripos (comparative anatomy), and in 1879 he was given a grant by the university to work for six months at the zoological station at Naples, and on his return from Naples he was appointed curator of the Zoological Museum at Cambridge and a university demonstrator in zoology. Haddon was appointed professor of zoology at the Royal College of Science, Dublin, where he also served as assistant naturalist to the Science and Art Museum in 1880. In 1888-9, with the aid of grants from the Royal Irish Academy and the Darwin fund of the Royal Society, he went to the Torres Strait to study the marine biology of coral reefs. Haddon began lecturing in physical anthropology at Cambridge (1894-8), where he was awarded a DSc degree in 1897. The following year he organized and led the famous Cambridge anthropological expedition of 1898-9 to the Torres Strait and New Guinea. In 1900, on the strength of the scientific results of the expedition, he was appointed university lecturer in ethnology at Cambridge, and in 1901 election into a fellowship at Christ's College permitted him to resign his Dublin chair. In 1910 Haddon completed his History of Anthropology and the following year published The Wanderings of Peoples. He died at his home, 3 Cranmer Road, Cambridge, on 20 April 1940.

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