She was known to be involved in the practice of physical anthropology, as she measured over sixty thousand skulls in Anatolia, which was aimed to support the Turkish History Thesis.

[1][2] Afet İnan was born to İsmail Hakkı Bey (İsmail Hakkı Uzmay) and Şehzane Hanım from Doyran (present day Dojran),[3][4] in 1908 in the district of Kesendire (Polyoroz, present day Kassandra, Greece) in Salonica Vilayet.

Since her father then married a young girl, Ayşe Afet decided to become a teacher to earn her own living.

[6] When they lived in Biga, her younger sister Nezihe was born to her father Ismail Hakki and his second wife.

After returning to Turkey in 1927, she attended the French Lycée Notre Dame de Sion Istanbul.