(See front cover)
In Washington last week one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists told the National Academy of Sciences about an Englishman who was raised in Italy and married a Jewess. In consequence this Englishman's gestures gradually became half Italian, half Jewish.
Anthropology is neither an old science like mathematics, astronomy and medicine, nor a modern one like genetics or electronics. The ancient Greeks were willing enough to assign man a place in the animal kingdom and some of them, notably Anaximander, had an inkling of evolution. But they were content to speculate and philosophize. In the early 19th Century anthropology as a science had made little headway. Species and varieties of plants and animals were considered changeless, and so were the races of man. The strange manlike bones found here & there in caves and quarries were thought to be the remains of monsters. The beliefs and practices of primitive people were shrugged off as so much sordid playacting. When the origin and fluidity of species, the significance of fossils and the rationale of primitive cultures were better understood, anthropology began to make progress as a serious study of man in all his aspects.
Modern anthropology overlaps a number of sciences—anatomy, pediatrics, sociology, psychology, ethnology, paleontology. Few living men in this vast field have plowed over all of it. The venerable Sir James Frazer (The Golden Bough) surveyed the realm of savage culture. Sir Arthur Keith is an authority on the forerunners of Homo sapiens, Malinowski on primitive sex customs, Levy-Bruhl on primitive mentality. Harvard's Hooton, a thorough student of African archeology and a brilliant commentator of human evolution, is first and foremost an anthropometrist—a man with a pair of calipers and a battery of tabulating machines. The Smithsonian Institution's famed Ales Hrdlicka is a physical and geographical anthropologist. In range and volume of work and weight of influence, Dr. Hrdlicka would stand alone in the U. S. except for one man. That one is Franz Boas.
Franz Boas got into anthropology 53 years ago. He has invaded almost every branch of this science: linguistics, primitive mentality, folklore, ethnology, growth and senility, the physical effects of environment. He reminds his colleagues of the oldtime family doctor who did everything from delivering babies to pulling teeth.
By no means all anthropologists share Dr. Boas' belief in the tremendous physical influence of environment. But when he has something to say they listen respectfully.
Members of the lordly National Academy of Sciences (membership limited to 300) and a few outsiders listened attentively last week from their comfortable leather chairs when old Dr. Boas stood up in the Academy's severe, oak-paneled lecture room to deliver what was probably his last public address as a practicing scientist. Next month Dr. Boas will retire from the faculty of Columbia University, which he joined 40 years ago.
Immigrants. In 1908 the U. S. Immigration & Naturalization Service asked Dr. Boas to study the question of physical changes in the descendants of immigrants. Over the ensuing 27 years Dr. Boas piled up a mountain of evidence that such changes do occur. Last week's talk was a summation of those years of research.