William Sears was born on December 17, 1920 in Valley Stream New York. He died on December 20, 1996 in Vero Beach, Florida. He earned his Masters Degree from the University of Chicago in 1947, and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1951. A unique characteristic of Sears' is that he sang a variety of songs while he worked, from the Pogo Christmas Carol to Protestant hymns.
From 1947-1953, he worked first as an Instructor and then as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. During those years he also worked during the summers as an archaeologist. In 1955, he began working at the Florida State Museum which is now the Florida Museum of Natural History. In 1964, he became a Professor of Anthropology and the chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Florida Atlantic University. He held these positions until 1975. Sears was a member of the Society of American Archaeology and the American Anthropological Association.
Sears did research on topics such as prehistory, political-religious structure, the relationship to an economic base with the advent of agriculture in southeastern United States. Sears also believed that corn was essential to the growth of complex societies in North America. His fieldwork proved that people in Florida were using corn as early as 300 B.C.
http://www.aaanet.org/an/ob9704.htm
American Men and Women of Science. 13th edition. Vol. 5. edited by the Jacques Cattell Press. R.R. Bowker Company, New York and London. 1976.
Written by students in an Introduction to Anthropology course at MSU-Mankato