Ruth Benedict, Ph.D.

Anthropologist—

BORN ON JUNE 5, 1887, in New York City, Ruth Fulton moved several times, including some time spent in St. Joseph, Mo., as her widowed mother pursued teaching jobs. She graduated from Vassar College in New York in 1909, and continued her academic pursuits, receiving her doctorate degree in anthropology from Columbia University in New York City. At Columbia, she studied under one of the preeminent figures in the history of anthropology, Franz Boas, and became close friends with Edward Sapir and Margaret Mead, both influential anthropologists. 

Her first book, “Tales of the Cochiti Indians,” (1931), and her two-volume “Zuni Mythology,” (1935), were based on 11 years of research into the religion and folklore of different Native American groups. “Patterns of Culture,” (1934), is still recognized as a major contribution to anthropology. In that book, she illustrated, through a comparison of cultures, how small a portion of the possible range of human behavior is incorporated into any one culture, and argued that it is the “personality,” the particular complex of traits and attitudes of a culture, that defines the individuals within it as successes, misfits or outcasts. 

Benedict was strongly opposed to racism and a forceful proponent for tolerance of cultural difference and variation in lifestyles in our own society.

From 1943 to 1945, she was a special adviser to the Office of War Information on dealing with the people of occupied territories and enemy lands. This assignment led her to write her 1946 book, “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.” In 1947, she was named president of the American Anthropological Association and was acknowledged as one of the outstanding anthropologist in America.