Edward Eyre Hunt, Jr

Edward Eyre Hunt Jr. (1922 — 1991) (also known as Ed Hunt) was an American physical anthropologist and human biologist.

Education and academic career Ed Hunt completed his B.A. from the Harvard College in 1942. After completing his bachelor's, he served in the United States military as a "psychology statistician" for the "Flying Safety Branch" of the United States Army Air Corps for a period of four years. He rejoined Harvard in 1946, and started his graduate work in the subject of physical anthropology. He did an anthropological study on the "depopulation of Yap" in Micronesia which was sponsored by the United States Navy. He utilized the data from the study to complete his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Harvard University in 1949 and 1951, respectively. His doctoral advisor was Earnest Albert Hooton. Between 1966 and 1969, he served at the City University of New York as a professor of anthropology and at the Yale Medical School as an assistant professor. From 1969 to until his retirement in 1985, he served as a professor of anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University. In 1986, he co-founded the Dental Anthropological Association (US). His prime area of research were the "evolutionary aspects of dental and skeletal morphogenesis, and human growth and development". His research subjects included body composition, demography, dermatoglyphics, history of anthropology, primate behavior, and somatology.

Hunt wanted the focal point of the whole field of biological anthropology to be "causes" instead of "descriptions". Binghamton University's Gary D. James noted that Hunt's suggested studying approach that growth studies should focus on "causes for individual and population variability" contributed in "changing the study of growth from a largely descriptive science to one focused on variation". Binghamton University's Gary D. James noted that the research work of some of his contemporary scholars including Carleton S. Coon, Stanley M. Garn and Paul T. Baker was "strongly influenced" by Hunt. Hunt was versed in the use of statistics. According to Flint and Lieberman, he pioneered the application of statistics to the fields of physical anthropology and human biology.

Death Hunt died in 1991 at Magnolia, Massachusetts. He had undergone a surgery of the gallbladder. However, after the surgery, an embolism occurred, resulting in his death. In his youth, he had also had Hodgkin's disease, but that was completely cured.

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Selected papers