The American anthropologist Ralph Linton (1893-1953) developed theoretical positions that helped to unify cultural anthropology.

Ralph Linton was born on Feb. 27, 1893, in Philadelphia, Pa., into an old Quaker family. While attending Swarthmore College, he came under the influence of Spencer Trotter, a teacher of general science who inspired him to look beyond his own culture to understand the behavior and points of view of peoples in other parts of the world.

Linton did fieldwork in prehistoric archaeology in New Mexico and Colorado in 1912; in Guatemala in 1912 and 1913; near Haddenfield, N. J., in 1915; at Aztec, N. Mex., in 1916; in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado in 1919; at the Hopewell site in Ohio in 1924; and in Wisconsin in 1929 and 1933. He did ethnological fieldwork in the Marquesas Islands of the Pacific (1920-1922) and in Madagascar (1925-1927); in the summer of 1934 he was in charge of the Laboratory of Anthropology's training expedition...