ANTHROPOLOGIST

A Classic Study.

Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, a classic study of the influence of culture on individual personality, was a best-seller when it was published in 1928 and made her one of the best-known anthropologists in American history.

Background.

Born in Philadelphia, Mead earned a B.A. at Barnard College (1923) and a Ph.D. at Columbia University (1929), where she studied anthropology under Franz Boas, who became her mentor. Boas removed the weight of racism from anthropology by denying the existence of "higher" or "lower" forms of humanity. He also denied that genetic inheritance was the primary determining factor in creating human capabilities, falling back on the view of John Locke that the environment in which the individual matures has a far greater influence on human development. According to Boas—and Mead—it was not "nature" but "nurture" that was...