Fred Eggan

Frederick Eggan was president of the American Anthropological Association from 1953 to 1954. He was also awarded the Weatherhead Resident Scholar in 1979 by the School for Advanced Research for his work entitled “The Great Basic Background of Hopi Culture History. He also received the Viking Fund medal in 1956. Towards the end of Frederick Eggan’s career in the 1960s, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as to the National Academy of Sciences.

Fred Eggan served as chairman at the University of Chicago of the department of anthropology; he was also president of the American Anthropological Association. He was also employed as a professor of psychology, sociology, and history at Wentworth Junior College and Military Academy in Missouri before he obtained his PhD. Eggan also worked as a research assistant to Radcliffe-Brown at the University of Chicago, researching the social organization of Native American tribes. During his time teaching at the University of Chicago, Frederick held several positions. He was employed as an assistant professor (1940–1942), an associate professor (1942–1948), and professor (1948–1963). Fred retired from teaching in 1974. He addressed the connection between anthropology and the educational system in the following terms “Anthropology and education should have close working relations. Educators are occupied by the task of keeping the operations going, particularly in this period of changing models, and have little time or opportunity to step outside their educational institutions and them as a system in the society as a whole. He was also the director of the Philippine Studies Program at the University of Chicago. Eggan also held a prominent position for the Philippine government during World War II as chief of research.

His best known works include his edited volume Social Anthropology of North American Tribes (1937) and The American Indian (1966).

Frederick Eggan has participated in several field studies at many different locations. Some of these sites include: Santa Fe where he lived with the Hopi Indians for a summer (1932), Mississippi and Oklahoma where his research was focused on primarily the Choctaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians (1933), and the Northern Philippines where he studied social changes in the Ifugao, Bontok, Tinguian, and Ilocano Indians (1934–1935).

Frederick Russell Eggan (September 12, 1906, in Seattle, Washington – May 7, 1991) was an American anthropologist best known for his innovative application of the principles of British social anthropology to the study of Native American tribes. He was the favorite student of the British social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown during Radcliffe-Brown's years at the University of Chicago. His fieldwork was among Pueblo peoples in the southwestern U.S. Eggan later taught at Chicago himself. His students there included Sol Tax.

Frederick Eggan was born in Seattle, Washington, on September 12, 1906, to Alfred Eggan and Olive Smith. Eggan earned his master's degree in psychology with a minor in anthropology from the University of Chicago in the early 20th century. He received his PhD in anthropology from the same university several years later with a doctoral thesis entitled “Social Organization of the Western Pueblos” analyzing the social organization of Pueblo Indians in the Southwest. Fred was an active member in the discipline of anthropology at a critical time when new technologies and methods were being invented for archeological purposes. He mentions these innovations in his paper on “Social Anthropology and the Method of Controlled Comparison.” He speaks of the new aids to anthropological research such as radiocarbon dating, genetics, and the experimental method which are just a few of the many rapid technological advances that had taken place to aid the discipline in this time. Eggan married Dorothy Way in 1938; she was also an anthropologist of the Hopi. Fred died in his house in Santa Fe, New Mexico from heart failure on May 7, 1991; he was 84.

His wife, Dorothy Way Eggan (1901–1965), whom he married in 1939, was also an anthropologist.