Harvard Scientists Observe Physique Influences Career

A career and physical analysis of 2,631 Harvard graduates has helped to substantiate Sheldon's theory of body-types. Sheldon suggested that varying proportions of fat content, muscle content, and body density in individuals indicate different behavior characteristics. In their recent study, Frederick Stagg, Research Fellow in Physical Anthropology, and Professor Earnest A. Hooton find that a definite relationship exists between the pattern of a man's life and his physical make-up.

According to Stagg, the study reveals that Government officials in the group tend to be lean and unmuscular, scientists moderately thin with better than average muscles. The law profession attracts portly men with a sub-par muscularity, with a smattering of big-muscled "fighting lawyer" types. Artists have a medium fleshiness and below-par muscularity, whereas theology generally attracts lean, unmuscular, lightly-built men with a minority of the muscular "fighting parson" type.

This investigation is made more valid since in a previous study, body-measurement photographs of some 45,000 American soldiers revealed that men of certain body types were best-fitted to particular jobs. The anthropologists applied this generalization to photographs and biological data collected by Dr. Dudley A. Sargent, head of physical training at Harvard for four decades before World War I. One conclusion, for example, was that the muscular, stockey type usually succeeded in engineering, while lightly-built often went into other work.

Correlating physical types with fatal diseases, the scientists find that 21 percent of deaths were due to blood-clotting causing heart failure. Stocky men with under-par muscularity were the usual victims of coronary thrombosis and cancer. Tuberculosis claimed many tall, muscular men of light build while passing up heavier individuals of greater fleshiness.

Stagg finds that a distinctive "American type" body has emerged from the study. "Tall in proportion to body weight, this type stands apart from the men of European parentage and makes up a large percentage of the men in the professions."