Existing comment:
Margaret Mead, 1901-1978
In 1925, having just completed a doctorate in anthropology, Margaret Mead embarked on a study of adolescence in Samoa's native culture. With few precedents to guide her, she had to chart her own methodology, and when her Coming of Age in Samoa was published three years later, it was widely praised for its pathbreaking contribution to its field. Yet this was only the beginning of a long string of achievements-including teaching, lecturing, and the writing of more than thirty books-that would ultimately make Mead one of the most respected intellectual commentators of her time. At her death, one tribute described her as "an all-wise matriarch whose . . . common-sense opinions were sought by millions."
Mead sat for this photograph in 1949, at about the time her book Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World was published.
Lotte Jacobi, 1949 |