Abstract
PROF. FRANZ BOAS, who died on December 21 last, was born at Minden, Westphalia, in 1858, and did most of his scientific work in North America, becoming instructor in anthropology at Clark University in 1882 after university studies at Heidelberg, Bonn and Kiel. He worked in physical anthropology, linguistics, evolution of material cultures and social characteristics and ceremonial, besides writing suggestive essays on questions of wide interest and making a notable attack upon the racist theories of Nazidom. Though he thus clearly belonged to what in Britain is sometimes called the Huxley -Haddon tradition of general practice in anthropology, he yet showed, as did Huxley and Haddon, a capacity for detailed observation as well as wide generalization. Among the outstanding features of his scientific work were his studies of the Eskimo in Baffin Land (1883-4) and his plan for and conduct of the Jessup North Pacific Expedition (1897 onwards) to study the relationships of peoples of North America and Northern Asia. As professor of anthropology in Columbia University (1899 onwards), as well as for a time curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History (1901-5), Boas found opportunities to coordinate the researches of different workers, and he became a central figurein the field of North American, and especially Eskimo, ethnology.
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FLEURE, H. Prof. Franz Boas. Nature 151, 75–76 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151075a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151075a0