Professor Franz Boas, President of the American Association for the Advancement of ScienceSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Mar., 1931), pp. 278-280Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/15045 .

Accessed: 01/05/2014 23:50

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to The Scientific Monthly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.77 on Thu, 1 May 2014 23:50:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

PROFESSOR FRANZ BOAS

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.77 on Thu, 1 May 2014 23:50:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE PROFESSOR FRANZ BOAS, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION

FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

FRANZ BOAS, president of the Ameri- can Association for the Advancement of Scienee for 1931, was born in Minden, Westphalia, in 1858. He was educated at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn and Kiel, receiving his doctorate from Kiel in 1881. Up to this, time his work had -not touched the field of anthro- pology, which he, more than any other person, was to mark out and develop. His dissertation was on the color of sea water, and he undertook what proved to be the first of his anthropological field trips in the pursuit of his interest in geography and physics. This expedition was to Cumberland Sound and Davis Strait, where he spent the better part of the years 1883 and 1884 among the Central Eskimo. Under the influence of Ratzel he had expected to demon- strate geographical determinism, but his appreciation of the far-reaching signifi- cance of the forms of the cultural life of this people finally determined his life work. He returned from Hudson Bay with material on the geography of the region, but be had in addition abundant data on the cultural life of the Central Eskimo as well as an ethnographical col- lection of specimens.

He returned to Germany, where he was assistant in the Royal Ethnological Museum in Berlin under Bastian, and docent of geography in the University of Berlin. In 1886 he undertook ethno- logical investigations in still another primitive field for the British Associa- tion for the Advancement of Science. It was among the Indians of the North Pacific Coast of North America that he began the anthropological field work with which he has identified himself throughout his life. FHrom this time till 1897 he made repeated trips to this re- gion, investigating the cultural life of the various tribes up and down the

coast, collecting mythological material and ethnographical specimens, taking measurements of bodily form, recording linguistic texts and making grammatical analyses. After 1897 the work was con- tinued as the Jesup Expedition, and was enlarged to include a number of in- vestigators under his direction.

From 1888 to 1892 he was docent of anthropology at Clark University. He was chief assistant of the department of anthropology at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, and to him was largely due the success of that first scientific exhibition of American ethnology. At the close of the World's Fair he took charge of the collections made there as curator of the department of anthropology of the Field-Columbian Museum, coming, in 1896, to the American Museum of Natu- ral History in New York City where he was assistant curator and curator till 1905. From the time of his coming to New York he was lecturer in physical anthropology in Columbia University, and from 1899 until the present time he has been professor of anthropology at that institution. In 1912, he lectured at the International School of Arche- ology and Ethnology in Mexico City and, in 1924, at the Institute of Culture History at Oslo.

Besides his life-long anthropological work on the North Pacific Coast Dr. Boas has carried on investigations in Porto Rico, in Mexico and in the South- west pueblos, and is at the time of his election as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science spending his sabbatical term among the Kwakiutl Indians of Van- couver Island, the tribe of the Northern Coast with which he has been most closely identified.

Alone among anthropologists Dr. Boas has worked in the three major .9

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.77 on Thu, 1 May 2014 23:50:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

280 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

fields of anthropology: physical anthro- pology and anthropometry; linguistics; and cultural anthropology. Archeology is the only branch of anthropology to which he has not made major personal contributions. In his work in physical anthropology he has constantly called at- tention to the necessity of investigations into the rates and processes of physical change so that we may know something of the behavior of physical measure- ments under various hereditary and en- vironmental conditions, information that is necessary before we can intelligently use physical statistics as a basis for the classification of human groups. In lin- guistics he has set a high standard for the recording of primnitive languages and for the analysis of their grammat- ical forms, and has interested himself in the processes of linguistic development and in the use of this material in his- torical reconstruction. In cultural an- thropology he has emphasized the im- portance of a twofold approach, the one aiming at the most complete and fully interrelated study of the different as- pects of the cultural life of any peoples, and the other aiming to place this cul- ture and the different aspects of it in its broad setting as one local variant of much wider distributions. The latter of these emphases has led to his interest in historical reconstruction of those parts of the world without written rec- ords, and the former to his insistence on the great role played by the forms of institutional life in the psychology of any peoples, and his understanding of the possible equal value of very diver- gent cultural forms.

It is seldom that one man has been so largely responsible for the history of a scientific discipline as Dr. Boas of an- thropology. Almost every American anthropologist has been a student of Boas, ancd his work in all fields of an- thropology has made him a leader in fact as well as in name.

The honors that he has received have been in keeping with his achievements. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by Oxford University and Clark University, the degree of Sc.D. by Ox- ford University and Columbia Univer- sity and the honorary Ph.D. by the University of Graz. He was made a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1900. He was president of the American Anthropological Associa- tion from 1907 to 1909, of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1910, of the XXIII International Congress of Americanists in 1928.

For years he has held offices which in- volve incessanit labor, not only of or- ganization and administration but even of financing. He was editor and guiding spirit of the Jesup North Pacific Ex- pedition series and of the American Folk-Lore Society. He is editor of the American Ethnological Society, of the Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, and of the International Jotrnal of American Lingtisties, to men- tion only a few.

He submnitted plans and secured funds from the Carnegie Institution for a con- centrated drive to get written records of the nearly extinct Incdian languages of North America. In less than five years some twenty-three grammars have been written under his direction; the work is continuing and may soon be extended to include Latin America.

His bibliographv is extensive, but the following may be singled out for special mention: "The Growth of Children," 1896, 1904; "Social Organization and Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl," 1897; "Changes in Bodily Form of Descen- dants of Imnigrants," 1911; "Tsim- shian Mythology," 1909; "The MVJind of Primitive Man," 1911; "Kultur und Rasse," 1913; "Primitive Art," 1927; "Anthropology and Modern Life," 1928. R. B.

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.77 on Thu, 1 May 2014 23:50:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions