Sherburne Friend Cook

Born in 1896, Sherburne Friend Cook was an American physiologist who later became known for major work in demography, archaeology, and ethnohistory. Reliable summaries describe him as a professor and chair of physiology at the University of California, Berkeley, and as an early pioneer in quantitative studies of Native peoples in North America and Mesoamerica.

Much of his writing focused on California Indian population history, epidemics, mission records, and the effects of colonization. Works associated with him include The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization, The Epidemic of 1830–1833 in California and Oregon, and The Population of the California Indians, 1769–1970. He also co-authored The Population of Central Mexico in the Sixteenth Century, showing the wide reach of his demographic interests.

Cook died in 1974. His reputation rests on the way he combined scientific habits of measurement with historical and archaeological evidence, helping shape later scholarship on Indigenous population change in the Americas.