Education
He completed his doctoral degree at Harvard in 1941.
He completed his doctoral degree at Harvard in 1941.
Born in South Bend, Indiana, he earned his degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. He made his first field study in the Australian outback in 1938 and returned periodically to study microevolutionary processes. After teaching briefly at the State College of Washington, he served as an Army Air Corps officer in World World War World War II He taught anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles from 1948 until his retirement in 1974, continuing his research, and writing many articles and a widely used textbook on human evolution.
His lifework was summarised in a monograph published in 1993 by Oxford University Press.
He died on 5 March 1994 in Santa Barbara of bone cancer. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946, and several of his field seasons in the Australia were financed by the Carnegie Corporation.
He had a very mutually fertile 50-year collaboration with Norman Tindale of the South Australian Museum and University of Adelaide. with whom he collaborated included: Earnest Hooton.