Ben Finney

Ben Rudolph Finney (born 1933) is an American anthropologist known for his expertise in the history and cultural and social anthropology of surfing, Polynesian navigation and canoe sailing, and in the cultural and social anthropology of human space colonization. As “surfing’s premier historian 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 has played a key role in the Hawaiian Renaissance since his construction of the Hokulea precursor Nalehia in the 1960s and his co-founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society in the 1970s.

A character in Launch Out, a Philip Robert Harris science fiction novel which is set in the year 2010, is based on Dr. Finney: a University of Hawaii professor of anthropology who is also the President of the fictional Unispace Academy.

The son of a United States Navy pilot, Ben Finney grew up in San Diego, California. He earned his B.A. in history, economics and anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley 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 Hawaii 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 which Finney co-authored in 1966 with James D. Houston. Finney earned his Ph.D. in anthropology at Harvard University in 1964.

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