Alfred Cort Haddon was born on May 24, 1855, in London, England.

He was a British anthropologist, ethnologist, and author. He studied zoology at Cambridge University (B.A., 1879; M.A., 1882; Sc.D., 1897). He also studied marine biology in Naples, France. In 1879, he was appointed as Curator in Zoology and Demonstrator in Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge. He became Professor of Zoology at the College of Science in Dublin (1880-1901) where he founded the Dublin Field Club in 1885. In the 1880s and 1890s, he went on expeditions to the Torres Strait Islands, New Guinea, and Borneo to study coral reefs and marine zoology. He brought home a large collection of ethnographical specimens, found today in the British Museum and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University. He also became interested in anthropology, publishing many papers dealing with the indigenous people. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1899. In 1900, he was appointed lecturer in ethnology at the University of Cambridge, and reader in 1909, a post he held until his retirement in 1926. After WWI, he founded the School of Anthropology at Christ's College, Cambridge. He was president of Section H (Anthropology) in the British Association meetings of 1902 and 1905. He was president of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, of the Folk Lore Society, and of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. He contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Dictionary of National Biography, and Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

In 1881, he married Fanny Elizabeth Rose (1857–1937). He died on April 20, 1940, in Cambridge, England.