This Month's Puzzler
On November 15, 1978, this woman died at age 76 in New York City. Born in
Philadelphia in 1901, she was raised in an intellectually-oriented family (her
mother was a sociologist, her father a professor of finance). After attending
DePauw University for a year, she transferred to Barnard College in 1920, where
she graduated with a degree in anthropology in 1923. That fall, she went across
the street to Columbia University, where she studied under Franz Boas and Ruth
Benedict and earned a Ph.D. in 1929. During a 1925 field trip to Samoa, she
gathered material for her doctoral dissertation, which ultimately became her
first book, Coming of Age in Samoa (published in 1928, when she was 27).
She went on to become an enormously influential figure in American culture,
writing two dozen books and hundreds of articles. She also spoke out on such
topics as women's rights, child-rearing, sexual morality, nuclear proliferation,
race relations, and world hunger. In awarding her the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 1979, President Jimmy Carter said:
"[She] was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it. To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn."
At an age when most of her contemporaries had slowed down or retired, she was
still going strong. In an interview on her 75th birthday, she was quoted in
Newsweek/ magazine as saying:
"Sooner or later I'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire."
Who is this person? (Answer below)
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