Pioneer cultural anthropologist. Born to a Quaker family in Philadelphia and raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Edward Sherwood Mead, an economics professor, and Emily Fogg Mead, a sociologist. After graduating from Doylestown High School, Mead enrolled at DePauw University in 1919. After one year, she transferred to Barnard College, Columbia University where she studied anthropology under Frank Boas. She earned her undergraduate degree from Barnard in 1923; and her M.A. degree in psychology, from Columbia in 1924. Her first field work in the Samoan Islands was completed between 1925 and 1926. In 1926 Mead won a position as assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Her best selling book, "Coming Of Age In Samoa" was published in 1928 and was based on her field work there. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1929. She was among the first to study child rearing practices and their effects on societies. Her theory of imprinting, a method through which she believed children learn, continues to be researched today. Between 1931 and 1938, she was in New Guinea and Bali doing field work. In 1939, she returned to the United States and began two years as a visiting lecturer at Vassar College. During her career, she served as executive secretary to the Committee on Food Habits, a member of the Committee on Research of the Mental Health Division of the National Advisory Mental Health Council, secretary of the Institute for Intercultural Studies, president of the Society of Applied Anthropology, vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she taught at Columbia University as adjunct professor starting in 1954, while maintaining her position as curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1946 to 1969. Mead was married three times; she had one child with her third husband, anthropologist Gregory Bateson. She was posthumously inducted in to the National Women's Hall of Fame.