Margo Gray

To prove his theory, Sheldon needed photos, lots of them.

Sheldon was taking plenty of photos on his own, but he was also pursuing another source, the poster photographs that universities had been taking for years.

It didn't strike me that it was that difficult for him to get access to these photos.

We don't know exactly how many images Sheldon got his hands on, but we do know this.

His 1954 book, The Atlas of Men, includes no shortage of photos of Harvard freshmen.

Then there was Rosenbaum's second bombshell.

He discovered that contrary to what alumni believed, many of these photos still existed.

Yes, most universities had quietly destroyed their archives years ago, but thousands of images were still sitting in William Sheldon's personal collection, housed in the National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian.

Rosenbaum eventually got access to the boxes.

And inside, he found perfectly preserved negatives of nude freshmen, some still labeled with ages, height, weight, names.

Entire graduating classes were in there.

Yale class of 1950, 63, 64, 66, 71.

Princeton class of 1952.

Penn class of 1951.

The list went on.

When alumni found out about this, they were furious and they didn't stay quiet.

Until this whole saga resurfaced, Richard hadn't given these photos any thought, let alone wondered where his might have ended up.

When I started working on this story, I figured it would be hard to find sources.

Anyone who'd had their posture photo taken would likely be in their 80s or 90s by now, meaning they probably weren't online.

So I submitted a letter to Yale's alumni magazine explaining what I was working on and asking anyone with memories of the posture photos to reach out.