SOURCE: "Apprenticeship Under Boas," in American Anthropologist, Vol. 61, No. 5, 1959, pp. 29-45.

A respected American anthropologist, Mead is noted for her psychological and cultural studies of primitive societies, most notably Coming of Age in Samoa. Mead also studied with Boas, and in the following essay, which incorporates letters, conversations, and lecture notes, Mead discusses Boas's influence on her work as well as his impact on the field of anthropology.

The myths that obscure the personality of an intellectual leader gather thickest in the years immediately following his death, when there are many people alive who speak with varyingly authoritative voices, and the next younger generation listens. As one of Boas' students, and a student of his later, mellower years, I feel that it will be useful to include in this memoir something of the effects, as I see them, of the way he taught and the way he appeared...