Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-born ethnographer who was deeply influential on the development of anthropological research, especially in the United States. Born in Minden, Westphalia, Boas studied physics and geography at several German universities. On the advice of his advisor, geographer Theobald Fischer, Boas traveled in 1883 to Baffin Island to study indigenous cultures, sparking an interest in the peoples of the Artic and Subarctic that would lead him to return to the region several times in subsequent years. In 1887, Boas journeyed to the Pacific Northwest of the United States to research Native American peoples. Due to limited opportunities in Germany and concerns over growing antisemitism (his grandparents were secularized Jews), Boas decided to stay in the U.S. After taking a position for several years at Clark University, where he repeatedly clashed with university president G. Stanley Hall, Boas was selected by Frederic Ward Putnam, director and curator of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, to prepare ethnographic exhibits for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Afterwards, he helped to establish the Field Museum in Chicago and then went to work for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Boas was a pioneer in understanding cultures on their own terms and in their proper context, making him one of the formulators of cultural relativism. He was continually frustrated by both fellow scholars and the wider public in their portrayal of indigenous cultures as 'savage' and insisted that the differences between cultures were the product of particular physical and historical conditions rather than the relative 'advancement' or 'superiority' of one culture versus another.



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