Franz Boas

Franz Boas (1858–1942) was a German-born American anthropologist, often called the father of American anthropology. Trained in physics and geography, he turned to ethnology after a year among the Inuit of Baffin Island, described in The Central Eskimo, and then spent decades studying the peoples of the Pacific Northwest, especially the Kwakwaka'wakw. As a professor at Columbia University he trained a generation of anthropologists, including Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston, and argued against racial determinism, insisting that cultures must be understood on their own terms and in their own histories.