_-_Alfred_Haddon_-_2_-_Haddon_Library.jpg)
Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Alfred Cort Haddon
Alfred Cort Haddon, Sc.D., FRS, FRGS FRAI (24 May 1855 – 20 April 1940) was an influential British anthropologist and ethnologist. Initially a biologist, who achieved his most notable fieldwork, with W. H. R. Rivers, Charles Gabriel Seligman and Sidney Ray on the Torres Strait Islands. He returned to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had been an undergraduate, and effectively founded the School of Anthropology. Haddon was a major influence on the work of the American ethnologist Caroline Furness Jayne.
In 2011, Haddon's 1898 The Recordings of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits were added to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia's Sounds of Australia registry. The original recordings are housed at the British Library and many have been made available online.
Alfred Cort Haddon was born on 24 May 1855, near London, the elder son of John Haddon, the head of John Haddon & Co, a firm of printers and typefounders established in 1814. He attended lectures at King's College London and taught zoology and geology at a girls' school in Dover, before entering Christ's College, Cambridge in 1875.
At Cambridge, he studied zoology and became the friend of John Holland Rose (afterwards Harmsworth Professor of Naval History), whose sister he married in 1881. Shortly after achieving his Master of Arts degree, he was appointed as Demonstrator in Zoology at Cambridge in 1879. For a time he studied marine biology in Naples.
In 1880, he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the College of Science in Dublin. While there he founded the Dublin Field Club in 1885. His first publications were an Introduction to the Study of Embryology in 1887, and various papers on marine biology, which led to his expedition to the Torres Strait Islands to study coral reefs and marine zoology, and while thus engaged he first became attracted to anthropology.
On his return home, he published many papers dealing with the indigenous people, urging the importance of securing all possible information about these and kindred peoples before they were overwhelmed by civilisation. He advocated this in Cambridge, encouraged thereto by Thomas Henry Huxley, where he came to give lectures at the Anatomy School from 1894 to 1898. Eventually, funds were raised to equip an expedition to the Torres Straits Islands to make a scientific study of the people, and Haddon was asked to assume the leadership.
To assist him he succeeded in obtaining the help of Dr W.H.R. Rivers, and in later years he used to say that he counted it his chief claim to fame that he had diverted Dr. Rivers from psychology to anthropology.
In April 1898, the expedition arrived at its field of work and spent over a year in the Torres Strait Islands, and Borneo, and brought home a large collection of ethnographical specimens, some of which are now in the British Museum, but the bulk of them form one of the glories of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. The University of Cambridge later passed the wax cylinder recordings to the British Library. The main results of the expedition are published in The Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits.
Hub AI
Alfred Cort Haddon AI simulator
(@Alfred Cort Haddon_simulator)
Alfred Cort Haddon
Alfred Cort Haddon, Sc.D., FRS, FRGS FRAI (24 May 1855 – 20 April 1940) was an influential British anthropologist and ethnologist. Initially a biologist, who achieved his most notable fieldwork, with W. H. R. Rivers, Charles Gabriel Seligman and Sidney Ray on the Torres Strait Islands. He returned to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had been an undergraduate, and effectively founded the School of Anthropology. Haddon was a major influence on the work of the American ethnologist Caroline Furness Jayne.
In 2011, Haddon's 1898 The Recordings of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits were added to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia's Sounds of Australia registry. The original recordings are housed at the British Library and many have been made available online.
Alfred Cort Haddon was born on 24 May 1855, near London, the elder son of John Haddon, the head of John Haddon & Co, a firm of printers and typefounders established in 1814. He attended lectures at King's College London and taught zoology and geology at a girls' school in Dover, before entering Christ's College, Cambridge in 1875.
At Cambridge, he studied zoology and became the friend of John Holland Rose (afterwards Harmsworth Professor of Naval History), whose sister he married in 1881. Shortly after achieving his Master of Arts degree, he was appointed as Demonstrator in Zoology at Cambridge in 1879. For a time he studied marine biology in Naples.
In 1880, he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the College of Science in Dublin. While there he founded the Dublin Field Club in 1885. His first publications were an Introduction to the Study of Embryology in 1887, and various papers on marine biology, which led to his expedition to the Torres Strait Islands to study coral reefs and marine zoology, and while thus engaged he first became attracted to anthropology.
On his return home, he published many papers dealing with the indigenous people, urging the importance of securing all possible information about these and kindred peoples before they were overwhelmed by civilisation. He advocated this in Cambridge, encouraged thereto by Thomas Henry Huxley, where he came to give lectures at the Anatomy School from 1894 to 1898. Eventually, funds were raised to equip an expedition to the Torres Straits Islands to make a scientific study of the people, and Haddon was asked to assume the leadership.
To assist him he succeeded in obtaining the help of Dr W.H.R. Rivers, and in later years he used to say that he counted it his chief claim to fame that he had diverted Dr. Rivers from psychology to anthropology.
In April 1898, the expedition arrived at its field of work and spent over a year in the Torres Strait Islands, and Borneo, and brought home a large collection of ethnographical specimens, some of which are now in the British Museum, but the bulk of them form one of the glories of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. The University of Cambridge later passed the wax cylinder recordings to the British Library. The main results of the expedition are published in The Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits.