Stanley Garn was an internationally recognized author and researcher. Garn's work at Fels on tooth calcification and eruption made him one of the founders of the field of dental anthropology. His main focus was human growth and development and interactions between nutrition and genetics. He also studied dento-facial growth and the directions of human variability. Garn was an important contributor to the study of growth of low-birth-weight infants, nutrition in human growth, the relation of genetics to tooth development and osteoporosis and aging. As the author of approximately 900 publications, most of which were on his original research, Garn was an internationally recognized authority in many areas of human development.
Stanley Garn was born October 27, 1922, in New London, Connecticut. He studied anthropology at Harvard, where he received his A.B. on 1942. From 1942-1944, Garn was at the Chemical Warfare Service of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked as a research associate in chemical engineering. He designed gas masks that would fit the variety of faces of men and women who were in the service. He worked for the Poloraid Corp. as a technical editor from 1946-1947. Garn received his A.M. from Harvard in 1947. He received his Ph.D. in 1948, the same year he undertook a medical and anthropological expedition to do primary field research in the Aleutian Islands.
Garn joined Fels Research Institute in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1952. He worked in the Department of Physical Growth and Genetics. The largest and longest continuous study of human growth in the world took place at Fels. While at Fels, Garn's studies of fat and fat patterning, anthropometrics, the gain and loss of bone tissue with aging and skeletal maturation produced landmark findings. In an attempt to put the concept of human diversity in a scientific context of geographic variation and evolution, and also show how shallow knowledge of it was, Garn wrote Human Races (1961).
Garn was recruited in the late 1960's by The Center for Human Growth and Development. From 1968 to 1992, when he retired, Garn worked with colleagues who had similar interests. During his time there, he studied bones and teeth, fatness, serum markers, anthropometrics, pregnancy, fetal development, birth weight and the familial, economic and nutritional factors that affected them.
In 1976, Garn was elected to the National Academy of Science. In 1988, he was honored with American Association of Physical Anthropologist's Charles R. Darwin in Lifetime Achievement Award. The Human biology Council honored Garn with the Franz Boas award in 2002. Garn was professor emeritus of nutrition in the School of Public Health and professor emeritus of anthropology in LSA and emeritus fellow in the Center for Human Growth and Development.
Stanley Garn died August 31, 2007, in Ann Arbor, Michigan at age 84. He left behind his wife, Priscilla Crozier Garn and children Barbara and Bill.
Garn, Stanley. Culture and the Direction of Human Evolution. Ambassador Books, Toronto, Canada, 1962.
Garn, Stanley. Human Races. Charles Thomas. Springfield, IL. 1965.
Garn, Stanley. Readings on Race. Charles Thomas. Springfield, IL. 1968.
Written by: Jessica Newton
Edited by: Lillian Dolentz, 2008