November 11, 1925

“The father of modern anthropology,” German-American anthropologist Franz Boas, spoke on “The Aims and Methods of Anthropology.” The founder, at Columbia University, of the country’s first integrated department of anthropology and the first doctoral program in the field, Boas was instrumental defining the methodology of anthropological presentation at Harvard’s Peabody Musem, the Field Museum in Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. A key organizer of the American Anthrolpological Association, he also defined “four fields” approach of the nascent social science, consisting of physical anthropology, linguistics, archaeology and cultural anthropology.