Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the mid-twentieth century.

Mead's first ethnographic work, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), addressed adolescence and sexuality and catapulted her to national visibility. Her book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), explored gender roles and personality based on fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Mead also conducted fieldwork with the Omaha people; in Manus, Papua New Guinea; and in Bali. She wrote Keep Your Powder Dry, an ethnographic examination of American life, in the hopes of supporting mobilization for World War II. She coordinated two comparative studies on modern cultures in the 1950s, while focusing her own work on Russia. Her later work included returns to Papua New Guinea, Bali, and Samoa for longitudinal studies. She was curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1946 to 1969. Mead served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975.

According to anthropologist Paul Shankman, "Mead was anthropology's most significant public voice during the twentieth century." She is regarded as a founding figure in public anthropology and visual anthropology. Her ethnography of the South Pacific and Melanesia has been subject to vigorous academic debate. From the 1920s to the 1960s, her fieldwork was widely discussed in the press and she wrote a monthly column in Redbook magazine co-authored with partner Rhoda Métraux. Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution. Mead's association with cultural relativism and the sexual revolution led to sharp criticism from conservatives.