American anthropologist who became an authority on the peoples and cultures of the Malay Archipelago and who promoted modern archaeology. He also wrote several popular works on evolution and the growth of culture.

After graduating from Northwestern University in 1903, Cole did postgraduate work at the University of Chicago, the University of Berlin, and Columbia University (Ph.D., 1914). Intermittently, he did fieldwork in the Philippines and Indonesia for the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. His first important monograph, A Study of Tinguian Folklore (1914; Ph.D. dissertation), compared the old culture reflected in Tinguian myths with the culture of present-day Tinguians and demonstrated the changes that had taken place. Cole subsequently became assistant curator of Malayan ethnology and physical anthropology at the Field Museum.

In 1924 Cole went to the University of Chicago (Chicago, University of) and helped establish the graduate program in anthropology for which the university became renowned. He became a popular teacher and lecturer at Chicago, teaching courses in almost every field of anthropology except linguistics. He also instituted an archaeological survey of Illinois and became interested in the development of Midwestern archaeology. Cole became professor emeritus in 1948.

Cole wrote popular accounts of human evolution and the growth of culture, including The Long Road from Savagery to Civilization (1933) and The Story of Man (1937, with Mabel Cook Cole).