Franz Boas biography

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(born July 9, 1858, Minden, Westphalia, Prussia [Germany]—died Dec. 22, 1942, New York, N.Y., U.S.) German-born American anthropologist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the founder of the relativistic, culture-centred school of American anthropology that became dominant in the 20th century. During his tenure at Columbia University in New York City (1899–1942), he developed one of the foremost departments of anthropology in the United States. Boas was a specialist in North American Indian cultures and languages, but he was, in addition, the organizer of a profession and the great teacher of a number of scientists who developed anthropology in the United States, including A.L. Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Melville Herskovits, and Edward Sapir.

Boas was the son of a merchant. He was of delicate health as a child and spent much of his time with books. His parents were free-thinking liberals who held to the ideals of the Revolutions of 1848. Although Jewish, he grew up feeling completely German. From the age of five he took an interest in the natural sciences—botany, geography, zoology, geology, and astronomy. While studying at the Gymnasium in Minden, he became deeply interested in the history of culture. He followed his various intellectual bents in his course of studies at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Kiel, taking his Ph.D. in physics and geography at Kiel in 1881.

After a year's military service Boas continued his studies in Berlin, then undertook a year-long scientific expedition to Baffin Island in 1883–84. Firmly interested now in human cultures, he took posts in an ethnological museum in Berlin and on the faculty of geography at the University of Berlin.

In 1886, on his way back from a visit to the Kwakiutl and other tribes of British Columbia (which became a lifelong study), he stopped in New York City and decided to stay. He found a position as an editor of the magazine Science.

Boas's first teaching position was at the newly founded Clark University (Worcester, Mass.) in 1889. Next, he spent a period in Chicago, where he assisted in the preparation of the anthropological exhibitions at the 1893 Columbian Exposition and held a post at the Field Museum of Natural History. In 1896 he became lecturer in physical anthropology and in 1899 professor of anthropology at Columbia University. From 1896 to 1905 he was also curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; in that capacity he directed and edited the reports submitted by the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, an investigation of the relationships