Harry Bertram Hawthorn was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1910. He completed his B.Sc (1932) and M.Sc. (1934) to become a civil engineer. During the Depression, Hawthorn worked for New Zealand's "Native School Service." Unable to pursue his studies in science in the small communities in which he worked, he became interested in the humanities, studying history extra-murally. He earned his B.A. in 1937. The years spent in the "Native School Service" had an arguably strong influence on Hawthorn. He was offered and accepted a fellowship to study anthropology at the University of Hawaii in 1938. The following year he was offered another company to research anthropology at Yale University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1941. While there, he met Audrey Engel, who later became his wife.
Hawthorn's appointment to the University of British Columbia faculty in 1947 added Anthropology to the Department of Economics, Political Science and Sociology. His objectives upon coming to UBC were to:
"... establish his discipline in an academic setting of the University and the Province; to offer anthropology as a contribution to the general education of a broad group of students and to begin the selection and training of a few specialists; to establish problems for ethnological research; and, in keeping with conviction that scholarship should be useful as well as decorative, to discover possibilities for the practical application of anthropology in the Province and the country."
In 1949, Hawthorn was asked by the Provincial Government to study the problems confronting Doukhobors in British Columbia. He assembled a team of scholars from various disciplines to investigate different aspects of the issue. The subsequent report (1955) helped ease the Doukhobor's concerns and encouraged increased cooperation among the Doukhobors, non-Doukhobors and the government. In 1954, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration commissioned a comprehensive study of BC's Indigenous Peoples'. Hawthorn again assembled a research team that completed its survey in 1956. In that same year Anthropology, Sociology and Criminology separated from Economics and Political Science to form a new department with Hawthorn as its head, which he held until 1968. Hawthorn undertook a third large-scale interdisciplinary research project in 1963 -- The Survey of Contemporary Indians of Canada (1966, 1967).
In addition to the above-described activities, Hawthorn and his wife Audrey also played a significant role in developing the UBC Museum (later the Museum of Anthropology) and, in particular, developing the collection of West Coast artifacts. Hawthorn served as a member of the UBC faculty until his retirement in 1976. He died in 2006.