Norman Sauer

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Norman J. Sauer is an American forensic anthropologist and professor emeritus of anthropology at Michigan State University (MSU). He earned his bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Geneseo and his Ph.D. from MSU. His doctoral thesis analyzed human skeletal material from the Fletcher site in Bay City, Michigan (1974).

Sauer taught in MSU’s Department of Anthropology from 1974 to 2012. While at MSU, he co-directed the forensic anthropology track of the Forensic Science Program and directed the Forensic Anthropology Laboratory. He retired from MSU in 2013.

In 2015, Sauer was named vice president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. He is a Fellow of the academy and received its T. Dale Stewart Award in 2007.

Notable work includes identifying a 200-year-old mummy that had been offered for sale on eBay as belonging to the University of Maryland School of Medicine; the mummy was returned in 2011. He also analyzed the famous V‑J Day in Times Square photograph and concluded that the sailor depicted is George Mendonsa, who has claimed to be the sailor. Sauer has argued that race is not a valid method for classifying humans.