1901 Margaret Mead (1978 - ) Occupation/Field of Study: anthropology Exploration Zone: Humanity: anthropology, muliculturalist; Location of Activity: Australasia: Samoa; Period of Activity: 1901-1950; 1951-2000; Biography Since its inception, the relatively new field of social anthropology, the study of man, has been in a race against time to document the language, belief systems, arts and social organization of the world’s tribal societies before they were lost in the world-wide movement toward homogenization. Among those who were seized by the need to study while study was still possible was the young Margaret Mead who was then studying at Barnard College with the noted anthropologist, Franz Boas. Like others in her field, she was looking for her own little-known tribal culture to study, and she picked a group of Pacific Islands. Where Mead differed from those who sought merely to record primitive societies, the ethnologists, was that she wanted to use the societies she began to study on Bali, New Guinea and Somoa to illuminate issues and problems in our own society. She thought that if she could fully understand the way family life evolved in a totally different culture, she could get closer to understanding the ways in which our culture shapes us. Thus, she became one of the first social scientists to study systematically the ways that cultural influences mold children’s personalities and determine sexual attitudes. What she learned convinced her that the stages in the lives of European and American children were not so much determined by "nature" as by "nurture," that is, cultural influences not biology must be addressed if we want to understand our own society. Questioning the moral superiority of Americans particularly in regards to child rearing and sexual attitudes she was one of the first “multiculturalists.” For most of her career, beginning after her return from Samoa, in 1926, Mead was a curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History. On her expeditions she collected materials for the Museum’s Hall of Ocean Peoples. Known for her widely read books and articles and extensive lecturing she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was the President of the American Academy of Sciences. -Women of Discovery,  Milbry Polk. Publications Ahead of Their Time: A Biographical Dictionary of Risk-Taking Women Joyce Duncan (2002) Book: Biography;