First, identity. Who is Eugene Giles? He is listed in many directories of distinguished persons, but there is little agreement. The AAA associates him with "physical anthropological genetics, comparative human osteology, and forensic anthropology." American Men and Women of Science labels him "physical and biological anthropology, forensic anthropology," while in Who’s Who In America he is "Anthropology Educator." The National Faculty Directory simply says "anth." He’s not listed in "Favorite Customers of The Swedish Bakery," nor in Butler’s "Lives of the Saints." It may be instructive to know that the name Giles is revealed by the Oxford Encyclopedia of Surnames to be derived from the Latin Egidius, coming in turn from the Greek aigidion, meaning "a young goat." Better a young goat than an old goat.

     I want to ask, next, what kind of a person my principal text, the Giles c.v., reveals him to be. There is fiscal responsibility, as his birthday falls on June 30th, end of the fiscal year. Dualism, too, as the digit "two" appears four times in his social security number. Sympathy for Stephen Jay Gould’s five-sided critters in the Burgess shales is evidenced in the three fives of his phone number. A traditionalist, Giles is among the few academics who still present their vita in chronological order, thus calling attention to the distant past, much in contrast to the reverse chronologies of the "now" generation. That Giles is a patriot is clear from his membership in fifteen societies, no fewer than nine of whose names begin with the word "American." A man of unimpeachable consistency, he stuck it out at Harvard for three degrees, pointing out to me once that at Harvard it takes three degrees to learn what can be learned in two at Illinois. There is tenaciousness, in his service to the Department of Anthropology as department head for five years, and acting head on seven occasions; and as associate dean of not just one but two colleges at UIUC.

     If one is to deconstruct the vita as ethnographic text, an important requirement of observation today is the acknowledgment of reflexivity. I should tell you, therefore, that Gene and I were appointed to the UI faculty the same year, in the fall of 1964. At that point I got it into my mind that Inga was a nurse or perhaps a practitioners of some arcane Swedish medical techniques, and that Gene was a social anthropologist studying kinship in New Guinea. It took me years to get this corrected, and my understanding of Gene’s scholarship has gone downhill ever since. I suspect that he never quite got me straight either, because for decades he has mistakenly insisted that I am really an anthropologist, and has supported my activities and myself in the department on countless occasions, for which I thank him, more seriously than the rest of this paper may suggest.

     Moving to a more interpretive mode, the Giles vita suggests a man constantly on a quest. One repeatedly encounters the word "search," as in "search committees," for deans, professors, heads. His vita also shows a devoted teacher, advisor of theses with unpronounceable titles, and instructor of many courses, some with fascinating names such as "Individual topics," "graduate readings," "undergraduate individual study," and "junior year tutorial." I should insert that my younger daughter took Anthro 102 with him but insisted that he had a night job acting as Tom Bosley on the 1980s TV show "Charlie’s Angels."

     A substantial component of this discourse has to be the deconstruction of the many Giles publications. First, much can be learned from titles. What kind of a title author is Giles?

     There is first the travel motif, as in "Hydrogen Cyanide and Phenylthiocarbamide Sensitivity, Mid-phalangeal hair and color-blindness in Yucatan, Mexico," (1968), "Distribution of B-thalassemia trait and erythrocyte glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency in the Markham River Valley of New Guinea (1967), "Cranial variation in Australia and neighboring areas." Anyway, he has certainly been around. I understand there are Giles suitcases in the lost-and-found departments of airports in several continents.

     Then there’s the "progression away from titular obscurity" motif. Young scholars to publish short studies with long titles, and move, as they gain in seniority, to shorter and more digestible titles heading less digestible articles. But only gradually. I cite, thus, a mid-career Giles work, "A multivariate approach to fingerprint variation in Papua New Guinea: perspectives on the evolutionary stability of dermatoglyphic markers" (1981), which, incidentally, heralds a trend to his eventually overpowering fascination with crooks. By 1986 his titles had become quite easy to understand. For example, "Are We All Out of Africa" (in 1986) devotes its first page to asking the question, and the second to saying "probably not." The shortest, a magnificent accomplishment in title brevity, is "E. A. Hooton," 1991, edging out the very recent but already classic "Clarification or Confusion," published with Dr. Klepinger.

     I have to confess that the only piece of Giles’s research which I understood appeared in "Stature- and age-related bias in self-reported stature," of 1991, which told me that older men think they are taller than they really are, and that I had been lying about my height for years.

     Careful analysis of titles also shows a high level of sensationalism and a strong interest in crooks. At least nine include the word "sex," and even more include the morpheme "crim," and some even have both, for example, "Sex determination by discriminant function analysis of crania" (1963). Then there’s the promising "It Had Everything, Blood, Gore, Sex, Kinky Stuff" of 1988, an article which, sad to say, of only one page. And further, the recent seemingly incomplete study (or incomplete title), "The Butcher Who Rendered His Wife" of last year, also with Dr. Klepinger, which leaves open the question of "what" he rendered her. penniless, or perhaps ignorant?

     Content matters too, as well as titled. But in the interest of time, I’ll restrict myself to a comparative analysis of opening sentences. In some, Giles, always up to date, is heavily into diversity. 1968: "From an ethnic point of view, the Republic of Mexico’s people are among the most diverse in the Americas." 1980: "From the expatriate anthropologist’s perspective, Melanesia’s most distinctive characteristic is its immense diversity." A second type I’ll call the "No argument" opening: 1970: "To the anthropologist, the problem of identification is usually one of establishing the demographic characteristics of a skeletal population." 1991: "Police officers many times cannot accept as accurate eyewitness height estimates." 1985: "Surname analysis has proven methodologically useful." In 1973, he wrote, "Without doubt, both anthropologists and the people they traditionally study have advanced." But back in his salad days, he already had this technique down. 1960: "In paleontological classification, the paleontologist is required to make a judicious assessment." There is the "Tsk Tsk" type.1971: "Although in recent years there has been a flurry of interest in the genetics of preliterate peoples, few studies have concentrated on their morphological variability." 1981: "As Papua has become accessible there has been data collection, but some prehistorians believe that these exhausting efforts have contributed [very little]." 1966: "At least two articles in ‘New Guinea’ have used or implied race in a fashion that may leave thoughtful readers curious." Also, there’s the raised forefinger category: 1970: "Anyone who is or will be a physical anthropologist ought to satisfy himself that his profession is relevant." Finally, there’s the "take a deep breath" opening. I’ll restrict myself to a 1962 example: "It has only been in the last six years that the similarities between the sudden, transitory anemia produced in certain people by the intake of the antimalarial primaquine or a few other drugs and the symptoms of favism, caused in a few individuals (approximately 5 per 2000 in a recent Mediterranean survey) by eating or inhaling the pollen of fava beans, have been demonstrated to have the same enzymatic basis."

     Gene and I share an area of interest, the intellectual history of our disciplines. Having taken anthropology when Piltdown Man was still "Piltdown Man," it was from Gene that I learned that not all American biological anthropologists have names with double-o. I also learned that there is no way you can get through prelims without pronouncing correctly the name of the famous Czech physical anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička.

     Deconstruction of the Giles vita has taught me that here is a man who accomplished much in his field and for his university. They are accomplishments of an uncommon level of distinction. Indeed, there’s a touch of Guinness-ness in his vita; he is a holder of records. He started out as a wunderkind, publishing two papers at the age of 23, and more soon after. Some of his earliest work involved the study of ancient and recent coyotes, whose obviously criminal character led to Gene’s later interest in crooks. In 1966, when Giles left temporarily, I was told that he had been offered positions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, clearly a record. Gene later told me that Yale didn’t really make a solid offer. Anyhow, he chose Harvard; as they say, "You can always tell a Harvard Man." But you can’t tell him much.

     The significance of Giles’s career is also clear from the list of offices he has held -- or occupied -- many pages of everything from discussant and lecturer to President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, editor, keynote speaker, presenter of the lifetime achievement award to his advisor William W. Howells. It’s clear that he has been something of a party animal, as the vita is replete with invitations -- invited discussant, invited paper-giver, invited speaker, invited lecturer, invited editor. There’s lots more, and actually, so that you could have it all, I suggested passing out Gene’s vita with the menu, as it contains occasional culinary excursions such as the review, "The Roots of Mankind," and the paper, "The Missing Finger" of 1979. Curiously lacking is the recipe for the famous chocolate chip cookies that he regularly bakes for his grandsons -- and himself.

     Among the recent accomplishments of humanistic scholarship is the development of "reception history." How has Gene Giles been received? Well, I’m sorry to admit this, but he hasn’t scooted across the pages of history totally unscathed, and it’s only proper to point this out. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, an organization whose meetings he has never attended, and is listed in Who’s Who in America, a book he has never read. In the years of headship, his insistence on beginning his memos anonymously with "From Head of Department" was greeted with some consternation; as was his insistence that faculty members keep regular office hours. As Associate Graduate dean, he was known as a law-and-order administrator, which, too, may have led to his interest in crooks.

     But, aside from writing papers whose titles are too long, making people follow the rules, maintaining a maddening stick-to-it-ness, resurrecting dead criminals, and putting many of us to in his debt for his many accomplishments and services, there is little in the Giles reception history to criticize. He has retired from administration and from some of his teaching in order, I suspect, to avoid the things that prevent professoring from being the ideal profession. Thus, he will avoid going to meetings and writing reports, do more research and write, hunt down criminals and exonerate the innocent, and continue his activities as a devoted grandfather, peerless gourmet, frequent flier, enthusiastic supporter of Scandinavian-American independence movements, but surely a permanent resident of Champaign-Urbana, so that he and Inga can, for many years to come, continue to be great friends to all of us.