Mead, << meed, >> Margaret (1901-1978), was an American anthropologist known for her studies of how culture, rather than biology, determines human behavior. She lived among peoples of American Samoa and New Guinea to study their ways of life. Mead described how cultures differ in what behavior they consider appropriate. She was especially interested in studying personality development and gender roles in different cultures.
Mead’s best-known book, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), compares the lives of adolescents in a Samoan village and in Western societies. Her other books include Growing Up in New Guinea (1930), Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), Male and Female (1949), and Culture and Commitment (1970).
Mead was born in Philadelphia on Dec. 16, 1901. She graduated from Barnard College in 1923. In 1929, she received a Ph.D. degree in anthropology from Columbia University, where she was a student of German-born anthropologist Franz Boas. From 1926 to 1969, she was a curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She died on Nov. 15, 1978.
See also Boas, Franz .
