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Franz Boas was born at Minden, Westphalia, Germany, July 9, 1858. After studying at the Universitites of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Kiel, he received a Ph.D. in physics with a minor in geography from the University of Kiel in 1881. His first fieldwork experience was among the Eskimo in Baffinland, Canada, 1883-4. From 1885 to 1896, Boas conducted fieldwork under the auspices of several museums on the North Pacific Coast of North America. During this time he was also involved in an important project to bring the cultures of Native Americans to the general pubic as part of the Chicago World's Fair in 1892-3. Boas pioneered the concept of life group displays, commonly now as diaramas, and, as part of his argument that racial distinctions among humans are not valid he exhibited skulls of various peoples to demonstrate the irrelevance of brain size.
In 1896, Boas moved to New York and was appointed Assistant Curator of Ethnology and Somatology at the American Museum of Natural History, and Lecturer at Columbia University. Three years later, Boas became the first Professor of Anthropology at Columbia. While at the American Museum, Boas created the Northwest Coast Indian exhibit which remains intact to this day. However, he found the bureaucracy of the museum constraining to research and he resigned in 1905. He then turned his full attention to educating new anthropologists and furthering research in every aspect of the field.
Boas studied and collected information widely on race, linguistics, art, dance, and archaeology, commanding all four subdisciplies of anthropology. From his studies he developed his theory of relativism, debunking the prevailing beliefs that Western Civilization is superior to less complex societies. After guiding the Columbia Anthropology Department for 41 years, Boas became Professor Emeritus in 1937. In 1942, Boas died, having established anthropology as a recognized and distinguished science.
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