Ben Rudolph Finney was an American anthropologist known for his expertise in the history and the social and cultural anthropology of surfing, Polynesian navigation, and canoe sailing, as well as in the cultural and social anthropology of human space colonization. As "surfing's premier

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

and leading expert on Hawaiian surfing going back to the 17th century" and "the intellectual mentor, driving force, and international public face" of the '' Hokulea'' project, he played a key role in the Hawaiian Renaissance following his construction of the ''Hokulea'' precursor ''Nalehia'' in the 1960s and his co-founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society in the 1970s.

Biography

The son of a

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

pilot, Ben Finney was born in 1933 and grew up in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

. He earned his B.A. in history, economics, and

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 1955. In 1958, after serving in the U.S. Navy and working in the steel and aerospace industries, he went to Hawaii, where he earned his M.A. in anthropology at the University of Hawaiʻi in 1959. His master's degree thesis, "Hawaiian Surfing: a Study of Cultural Change", became the basis for ''Surfing: The Sport of Hawaiian Kings,'' a book that Finney co-authored with James D. Houston in 1966. Finney earned his Ph.D. in anthropology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1964. Finney held faculty appointments at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...

, the Australian National University, the University of French Polynesia, and the International Space University. From 1970 through 2000 he was a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where his courses included Human Adaptation to the Sea and Human Adaptation to Living in Space. From 1994 through 2003 he was the co-chair of the department of Space and Society at the International Space University. In the 1990s, Finney was a National Research Council Associate with the SETI project at NASA Ames Research Center and involved in the Sandia National Laboratories planning and implementation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for the disposal of nuclear waste. He was on the panel of experts for the 1998 PBS program ''Wayfinders: A Pacific Odyssey''. During 2004-2006 he was a curator of the Vaka Moana canoe voyaging exhibit at the Auckland Museum in New Zealand. He was the featured guest speaker at the 2007 National Conference for Educational Robotics. He later served as a professor at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and also as a distinguished research associate of the Bishop Museum. He and his wife, Mila, lived most of the year in Hawaii. Finney died on May 23, 2017, at the age of 83.

Polynesian voyaging

When Ben Finney was a University of Hawaii graduate student in 1958, working toward his Master of Arts degree and writing his dissertation on surfing, scholars were not yet in agreement that any canoe voyages over great distances on the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

had been intentional. The prevailing view was exemplified by a New Zealand historian with a low opinion of Polynesian navigation methods and canoes, Andrew Sharp, who believed that such voyages could only have been accidental. Finney did not agree with this view and became determined to disprove it. He built the first 40-feet-long replica of a Polynesian sailing canoe while he was teaching at

in the 1960s. When it was finished, he shipped it to Hawaii, where ancient Hawaii scholar Mary Kawena Pukui named it ''Nalehia'', which in the

Hawaiian language Hawaiian (', ) is a critically endangered Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family, originating in and native to the Hawaiian Islands. It is the native language of the Hawaiian people. Hawaiian, along with English, is an offi ...

means ''The Skilled Ones'', because of the grace with which its twin hulls rode the sea. In 1973, Finney co-founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society with artist Herb Kawainui Kane and sailor Charles Tommy Holmes. Within three years, they had designed, built, and sailed the '' Hōkūleʻa'' on its first historic voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti with a crew led by captain Kawika Kapahulehua and navigator Mau Piailug.

Awards

The awards that were bestowed upon Finney include: *1994: Royal Institute of Navigation Bronze Medal for the outstanding paper, "Rediscovering Polynesian Navigation through Experimental Voyaging" in the ''Journal of Navigation,'' Volume 46, 1993 *1995: French University of the Pacific Medal for contributions to the revival of traditional voyaging and the study of Polynesian culture and society *1995: Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics Tsiolkovsky Medal for contributions to the study of cosmonautics and the exploration of space *1997: University of Hawaiʻi Regents' Medal for Excellence in Research *2004: Hawaiʻi Book Publisher's Ka Palapala Po'okela Award for writing nonfiction *2007: Honorary Doctorate, University of French Polynesia

Publications

(These are incomplete listings.)

Selected books

*1966: ''Surfing: The Sport of Hawaiian Kings.'' With James D. Houston. Tokyo and Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Company. . **1996 30th anniversary edition: ''Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport.'' Petaluma: Pomegranate Communications. . *1976: ''Pacific Navigation and Voyaging.'' Auckland, New Zealand: The Polynesian Society. . *1979: ''Hokulea: The Way to Tahiti.'' New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. . *1985: ''Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience.'' Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press. . *1992: ''From Sea to Space (The Macmillan Brown Lectures 1989).'' Palmerston North:

Massey University Massey University () is a Public university, public research university in New Zealand that provides internal and distance education. The university has campuses in Auckland, Palmerston North, and Wellington. Data from Universities New Zealand ...

. Distributed by the University of Hawaiʻi Press. . *1994: ''Voyage of Rediscovery: A Cultural Odyssey through Polynesia.'' Berkeley: University of California Press. . *2003: ''Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors: Reviving Polynesian Voyaging.''

Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

: Bishop Museum Press. .

Selected articles

*1977: "Voyaging Canoes and the Settlement of Polynesia", ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

'', Volume 196, Number 4296: pages 1277–1285. *1981: "Exploring and Settling Pacific Ocean Space—Past Analogues for Future Events?" ''Space Manufacturing 4: Proceedings of the Fifth Princeton/AIAA Conference May 18–21, 1981'' (page 261). New York: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. *1988: "Voyaging Against the Direction of the Trades: A Report of a Canoe Voyage from Samoa to Tahiti". ''American Anthropologist,'' Volume 90, Number 2: pages 401–405. *1991: "Myth, Experiment, and the Reinvention of Polynesian Voyaging." '' American Anthropologist'', Volume 93, Number 2, June 1991, pages 383–404. *1994: "The Other One-Third of the Globe". '' Journal of World History'', Volume 5, Number 2. *1994: "Polynesian Voyagers to the New World". ''Man and Culture in Oceania'', Volume 10: pages 1–13. *1995: "A role for Magnetoreception in Human Navigation". '' Current Anthropology'', Volume 36, Number 3: pages 500–506. *2001: "Voyage to Polynesia's Land's End". '' Antiquity'', Volume 75: pages 172–181. *2007: "Tracking Polynesian Seafarers". ''

'', Volume 317: pages 1873–1874.

Selected chapters in other books

*1985: "Lunar Base: Learning to live in space" (pages 731–756) in Wendell Mendell, ed., ''Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century''.

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

: Lunar and Planetary Institute. . *1988: "Will space change humanity?" (pages 155–172) in J. Schneider and M. Leger-Orine, eds., ''Frontiers and Space Conquest: The Philosopher's Touchstone''. Bingham: Kluwer Academic Press. . *1996: "Colonizing an Island World" (pages 71–116) in Ward H. Goodenough, ed., ''Prehistoric Settlement of the Pacific''. Philadelphia: Diane Publishing Co. *2007: Three chapters in ''Vaka Moana, Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific''. Kerry Howe (

School of Social and Cultural Studies), ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. . *2007: "Polynesia, Micronesia and Eastern Melanesia: the Exploration and Settlement of Remote Oceania". In '' The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History'', Volume 3, pages 154–162.

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

In popular culture

A character in ''Launch Out,'' a Philip Robert Harris

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

novel that is set in the year 2010, is based on Finney, a University of Hawaiʻi professor of anthropology who is also the president of the fictional Unispace Academy.

References

External links

Ben Finney, Professor Emeritus.
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa faculty page. {{DEFAULTSORT:Finney, Ben 1933 births 2017 deaths People from Hawaii People from San Diego UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni University of California, Santa Barbara faculty University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa faculty American cultural anthropologists American maritime historians Hōkūleʻa Historians of Hawaii Polynesian navigation Historians from California