Margaret Mead was arguably the most renowned anthropologist of all time, contributing to the development of the discipline, as well as, introducing its insights to thousands of people outside the academy. Her work continues to contribute to the understanding of people around the world today. A prolific writer, she produced 44 books and more than 1,000 articles. Her publishings were translated into many languages.
She was both a popularizer of the insights of anthropology into modern American and Western culture and a respected, if controversial, academic anthropologist. Her reports about the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures amply informed the 1960s sexual revolution. Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of traditional western religious life.
Mead taught at the New School and Columbia University and a number of institutions, but her long term professional base was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She was much honored in her lifetime, serving as president of major scientific associations, including the American Anthropological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she received 28 honorary doctorates.
