SOURCE: An obituary in Science, Vol. 97, No. 2507, January 15, 1943, pp. 60-2.

Benedict was a renowned American cultural anthropologist who studied with Boas. The following excerpt is taken from her obituary tribute to her former teacher.

[Franz Boas] was born in Minden, Westphalia, and was educated at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn and Kiel, where his particular fields of study were physics, geography and mathematics. The subject of his doctoral dissertation presented to the University of Kiel was "The Nature of the Color of Sea Water," and his first act after receiving his degree was typical of the man. He had already arrived at his life-long conviction that for most scientific problems mere examination of the existing data or cunningly devised laboratory experiments are not enough; he saw the necessity of gathering new first-hand material on conditions as they actually exist in human experience. He wanted, in fact, to investigate...