Born on December 16, 1901, Margaret Mead became one of the world's leading anthropologists, and her fame became worldwide with the publication of her book "Coming of Age in Samoa". However, despite the good reviews the book received, and the status she achieved in the field of Anthropology, her career was beset in later years with controversy over her data and research in Samoa.
In 1925, she went on "her first field trip, to undertake a 'study in heredity and environment based on an investigation of the phenomenon of adolescence among primitive and civilized peoples.' Her task, as she described it, would 'involve working almost entirely with women, and should therefore add appreciably to our ethnological information on the subject of primitive women.'" (Howard 1995 1)
When she returned to New York after some five and a half months, she accepted a job as assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History. She had an association with that Museum until her death in 1978. But, it was the publication of her work in Samoa in 1928, entitled Coming of Age in Samoa, which first brought her world-wide attention. Her theory was that if Samoan adolescence could get through puberty without pain or clumsiness, so could Americans and Europeans." (Howard 1995 2 In 1930, she wrote Growing Up in New Guinea (she wrote thirty-two books in all) Another of her landmark anthropological books was Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935).
Following World War II, Mead returned to the South Pacific, specifically to Manus where she had worked twenty-five years earlier. Now, she was determined to find how the war had changed and affected the people of New Guinea.
She continued to write and lecture, and to teach at Columbia University and at Fordham, until her death from pancreatic cancer in 1978. Her status seemed secure, and her books were continually in print and used in anthropology courses as outsta...