Solon Toothaker Kimball

Solon Toothaker Kimball (August 12, 1909 – October 12, 1982) was an American anthropologist and educator. He was a pioneer in community studies, applied anthropology, and educational anthropology. Many of the research methods he developed remain commonplace in anthropological studies of communities and social classes.

Early life and education Kimball was born on August 12, 1909 in Manhattan, Kansas to Charles Augustus and Matie Kimball (née Toothaker). In 1934, he received a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard to study agricultural social structures in County Clare, Ireland as part of a team under Warner and Earnest Hooton. He and Arensberg would later coauthor the book Family and Community in Ireland in 1940 based on the results of this study.

Following the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent internment of Japanese Americans, Kimball moved into a position at the Poston War Relocation Center in southwestern Arizona, which was under the joint administration of the OIA and the War Relocation Authority. He was transferred in July of 1942 to work as the head of the Community Organization section of the WRA's Community Management Division in San Francisco until November of the same year, when he briefly served as acting director of the Manzanar internment camp near Los Angeles from November 5th through the 24th. Kimball then moved into a position as head of the Community Government and Activities unit under his former colleague John Provinse at the WRA's Washington office, working to develop policies for limited self-government within the camps and making frequent visits to them until leaving the position in August of 1945.

Personal life Kimball married Hannah Price in Boston in 1935 and had two children with her. His daughter Sally was born in 1938 and his son John Price was born three years later in 1941; John Price would die suddenly in 1977. Kimball was raised without a specific religious affiliation and remained non-religious throughout his life. He died due to congestive heart failure on October 12, 1982, in Gainesville, Florida. He had been nominated for the Society of Applied Anthropology's Bronislaw Malinowski Award, but died before he could receive it.