The Growth of American Physical Anthropology between 1925 and 1975

Abstract

was Aleg HrdWli~a. As his assistant, the writer was in an advantageous position to follow Hrdli2ka's maneuvers to gain support for his American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the most important of which was the founding of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (1930). The subsequent founding of the Viking Fund (1941) and of the National Science Foundation (1950) gave additional impetus to the movement. A graph showing the yearly increase in members of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and in numbers of graduate and undergraduate departments summarizes this history in a dramatic fashion. Also, it suggests that, unlike the rest of anthropology, physical anthropology moved from a museum phase into an academic phase around 1940 rather than in 1900, the date assigned by Wissler.