Arthur Edwin Harper Jr. ’41

Hoopoo died on Dec. 27, 2001. Born of missionary parents in Lahore, India, his preparatory schooling was at Woodstock HS, in India.

He had a distinguished academic career at Princeton, including making the dean's list all four years, the no-course plan senior year, Sigma Xi, Phi Beta Kappa, and graduating with highest honors in psychology. Active in the Whig Society, he joined Gateway Club.

After obtaining his master's at Iowa State, he received his PhD from Columbia in 1948. Hoopoo then returned to India as an educator/missionary of the United Presbyterian Church USA at the Ewing Christian College in Allahabad. After five years teaching psychology there, he was asked to develop a psychometric department at the world-famous Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta.

On his return to Ewing, Hoopoo started the Bureau of Educational Research, which has developed as one of the premier providers of tests and measurement instruments throughout India. He was continually called upon to act as adviser to various organizations of the Indian government, and in 1975 he was elected president of his section of the Indian Science Congress, an unusual elevation for a non-Indian national.

Space limits listing further accomplishments, but you can read about them in our 50th reunion book. Hoopoo was a truly dedicated Christian.

He was predeceased by his wife of more than 50 years, Erika Schlmeyer Harper, and is survived by his three sons, David, Stephen, and Philip, daughter Ruth Axilrod, and four grandchildren.

The Class of 1941