Franz Boas, an anthropologist and linguist, helped to found modern cultural anthropology in the United States. He and his students influenced all areas of anthropology through the 1930's, revolutionizing fieldwork methodology, linguistics, and the analysis of local texts and enabling local researchers to document their own history. Boas' studies focused on empirical ethnographic study of the Native American cultures of the Pacific Northwest, particularly of the Kwakiutl.

Born in Minden, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, in 1858, Franz Boas studied mathematics at the University of Heidelberg and Bonn. In 1882, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel. His initial course of study was geography, and he taught geography at the University of Berlin. In 1886, he traveled to Vancouver Island and studied Pacific Northwest Indian tribes. He then moved to New York and taught anthropology from 1888 until 1892 at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1893, he went to Chicago to work...