Ruth Benedict & Margaret Mead

After high school, Ruth Benedict took a year off to travel overseas. Upon returning home she was unsure of what she wanted to do with her life. Years later, she married Stanley Benedict, a Biochemistry Professor at Cornell Medical School.

In the fall of 1919, Ruth went back to school and began to focus more on anthropology. She studied under the famous diffusionist Franz Boas and became his assistant. Ruth taught Margaret Mead. Ruth and Margaret became good friends and developed a shared need of each other.

Ruth concentrated most of her efforts on researching and studying different cultures on which many of her writings were based. She wrote of the differences between the cultures around the world and talked about different patterns related to culture and behavior.

Ruth was very talented in summarizing and clearly arranging facts which were characteristic of her writings and ultimately her approach to anthropology; this, perhaps, may be the reason many of her reviews were published in professional papers and magazines throughout her career.

Ruth Benedict was a very important figure in early anthropology and even more so in cultural anthropology. She was one of the first female anthropologists of her time. Her books serve as a referral of humanistic thought in the 20th century. Ruth Benedict has helped shape the discipline of anthropology not only in the United States, but also for the rest of the world.

After a year at Depauw University at Greencastle, Indiana, Margaret Mead, entered Barnard College, Columbia University. It was here that she decided to make anthropology her major. She later received her B.A. degree. She also got her M.A. degree in psychology. In 1929, she received her Ph.D. Dr. Margaret Mead is a specialist in what she herself describes as “conditioning of the social personalities of both sexes.”

She had several field trips. First, she was in the Samoan Islands and than the Manus tribe of the Admiralty Islands in the West Pacific Ocean. In 1930, Dr. Mead went to study an American Indian Tribe the identity that is hidden by the name of “the Antlers” in her book noting her findings and conclusions. Between 1931 and 1933, Dr. Mead went in the New Guinea area to do research on three contrasted tribes, the Arapesh, the Mundugumor, and the Tchumbuli. For three years, starting in 1936, Dr. Mead was busy on fieldwork in Bali and New Guinea.

She has always found her profession so different that she has not felt the need for a hobby; she reportedly enjoys the theater and reads good poetry.

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