Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead B '23 MA '25 PhD '29 became a leading light in Columbia's Anthropology Department.
Mead transferred to Barnard after one year at DePauw College. Entering Columbia for grad school, she studied under early anthropology luminaries Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict (Mead's relationship with the latter was even rumored to be erotic). During the course of her graduate research, she did fieldwork in French Polynesia, and became an assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History. After assuming a number of other posts, she joined the Columbia faculty as an adjunct in 1954.
