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American academic and physical anthropologist
Ruth Sawtell Wallis
(15 March 1895 ? 21 January 1978) was an American academic and
physical anthropologist
.
Biography
[
edit
]
Ruth Otis Sawtell was born in
Springfield, Massachusetts
to Joseph Otis Sawtell and Grace Quimby.
[1]
She graduated from
Radcliffe College
in 1919 with a bachelor's degree in English. She then attended the school's graduate program in anthropology, traveling to Europe on a science fellowship to do research. She was the first to discover
Azilian
remains in France, uncovering two at
Montardit
,
Ariege
.
[2]
Upon her return to the United States, Wallis switched to the anthropology program at
Columbia University
under
Franz Boas
. She assisted in one of Boas's most famous studies, an examination of head circumference and changes in head shape among immigrants.
[1]
She then began studying growth and anthropometrics of young children; her doctoral thesis on that topic "remains a standard study widely quoted today". She was hired by the anthropology department at the
University of Iowa
in 1930. She married
Wilson Dallam Wallis
, a professor of anthropology at the
University of Minnesota
, in 1931, and took an assistant professorship in sociology at
Hamline University
.
[1]
She was later dismissed because "it was unthinkable to have two employed academics in one family during the Depression".
[3]
On behalf of the
Bureau of Home Economics
, she undertook the largest ever study of children's growth, which resulted in the standardization of sizing for children's clothes.
[2]
[3]
During the
Second World War
, Wallis examined labor statistics for the
War Manpower Commission
and helped coordinate the Japanese Language and Culture Program for the Army. She began writing mystery novels.
[1]
She helped create an ethnography of the
Micmac
in
Nova Scotia
in the 1950s,
[2]
and studied other native peoples in both Canada and the United States. After moving to Connecticut with her family, Ruth became a sociology lecturer at
Annhurst College
in 1956; she eventually became a full professor before retiring in 1974.
[1]
Works
[
edit
]
- Primitive Hearths in the Pyrenees
(1927) (with Ida Treat)
- "Ossification and Growth of Children from One to Eight Years of Age".
American Journal of Diseases of Children
37:61-87 (1929)
- Azilian Skeletal Remains from Montardit (Ariege) France
(1931)
- Too Many Bones
(1943), Dodd Mead; Dell
mapback
#123 (1946)
- No Bones About It
(1944), Dodd Mead; Bantam #72, 1946 (series character Eric Lund)
- Blood from a Stone
(1945), Dodd Mead, Bantam #109, 1947
- Cold Bed in the Clay
(1947), Dodd Mead (Eric Lund)
- Forget My Fate
(1950), Dodd Mead (Eric Lund)
References
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]
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