Thayer “Ted” Scudder, Caltech’s only professor of anthropology for the latter half of the 20th century, died Oct. 22 at age 96. At Caltech, he helped turn the Institute’s humanities division toward full research status, while his scholarship became internationally known for its long-term study of the social and environmental costs of large dams and forced resettlement.
Key facts
- Scudder joined what was then the Division of Humanities in 1964 and continued teaching in HSS until emeritus status in 2000.
- He was a leading specialist on dams and the displacement of communities affected by river basin development.
- His research followed affected populations across multiple generations in Africa, India, Nepal, Jordan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and the United States.
- He helped found the Institute for Development Anthropology in 1976 and later served on the World Commission on Dams from 1998 to 2000.
- Caltech says he was the first three-time recipient of its ASCIT teaching award and that he and his wife established the Eliza and Thayer Scudder Professorship in the Social Sciences in 2021.
What Scudder’s legacy means for Caltech students and faculty
Scudder’s career shows how Caltech’s humanities and social sciences can shape international policy as well as classroom learning. His work on dams, resettlement, and long-term field studies helped set an example for research that follows communities over decades rather than treating a project’s impact as immediate or short term.
For students and faculty in HSS, the practical lesson is that research at Caltech can connect deep scholarship with public consequences. Scudder taught introductory anthropology and courses on social anthropology, low-income majority populations, and Indigenous peoples under globalization, while also building a body of work that informed debates about development projects and their human costs.
- His teaching and research remain tied to HSS’s history as a research division.
- His named professorship, established in 2021, continues his and his wife’s support for social sciences at Caltech.
- His career offers a model of long-horizon, field-based research with policy relevance.
How did Scudder change Caltech anthropology?
He helped transform a teaching-focused division into a research-oriented one and became central to the emergence of social sciences at Caltech. His work contributed to the renaming of the division as HSS in 1966 and to the creation of the social sciences PhD program in 1974.
Scudder joined Caltech in 1964 and remained until retirement in 2000. Colleagues said he brought intellectual integrity, empirical rigor, and a strong commitment to teaching, while his research focused on the long-term effects of dam building and forced population resettlement.
Why did dam resettlement become Scudder’s life’s work?
Scudder began with an interest in Africa’s mountain regions, but his fieldwork with the Gwembe Tonga in what is now Zambia redirected his career toward the study of communities displaced by large dam projects. That research later extended to Egypt, India, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Laos, and other regions.
Over time, he concluded that large dams often produced serious long-term harm when studied across generations. His findings helped preserve land and livelihoods in several countries and influenced major debates about how development projects should be evaluated.
Who was Ted Scudder beyond his research?
Born in 1930 and raised in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, Scudder attended Phillips Exeter Academy before studying at Harvard University. He was known for mountaineering and ornithology, led an Alaska Range expedition in 1952, and later studied at Yale Divinity School before returning to Harvard for anthropology.
Caltech says he was survived by his daughter Alice Thayer Scudder and three grandchildren, and that he was predeceased by his wife and daughter Eliza “Lydee” Scudder.
