Margaret Mead
In 1979, Margaret Mead was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, a recognition that capped a career spent working across anthropology, ethnology, writing, and public life in the United States.
Born on December 16, 1901, in Philadelphia, Mead was educated at Solebury School, DePauw University, Barnard College, and Columbia University. She went on to work as an anthropologist, ethnologist, writer, curator, poet, and film director — a range of roles that reflected the breadth of her professional output. She wrote Coming of Age in Samoa, one of the works she produced during her career, and appeared frequently in the mass media during the mid-twentieth century as an author and public speaker. That sustained presence in public discourse made her a recognizable voice on anthropological subjects well beyond academic circles.
Over the course of her life, Mead collected a number of significant honors. She received the William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement, the Elizabeth Blackwell Award, the Gold Medal of the Society of Woman Geographers, the Kalinga Prize, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Miami. She was also elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Each of these awards recognized different dimensions of her work — from her contributions to science to her efforts in communicating knowledge to broader publics.
Mead died on November 15, 1978, in New York City. The Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented the following year, stood as a formal acknowledgment by the United States government of her contributions as an American writer, anthropologist, and public figure. Her career had taken her from her Philadelphia birthplace through some of the most prominent educational institutions in the country and into a role as one of the more visible scientific voices of her era in the mass media.
Quotes by Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead's insights on:
If we make one criterion for defining the artist the impulse to make something new, or to do something in a new way – a kind of divine discontent with all that has gone before, however good – then we can find such artists at every level of human culture, even when performing acts of great simplicity.
Too many people, when they reject God, go on believing in the devil. Many intellectuals have a sense of evil without a confidence in good.
The pains of childbirth were altogether different from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain. These were pains one could follow with one’s mind.
The important thing about women today is, as they get older, they still keep house. It’s one reason why they don’t die, but men die when they retire. Women just polish the teacups.
