The Most Famous

ANTHROPOLOGISTS from United States

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This page contains a list of the greatest American Anthropologists. The pantheon dataset contains 93 Anthropologists, 24 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Anthropologists.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Anthropologists of all time. This list of famous American Anthropologists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Anthropologists.

Photo of Lewis H. Morgan

1. Lewis H. Morgan (1818 - 1881)

With an HPI of 67.67, Lewis H. Morgan is the most famous American Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 46 different languages on wikipedia.

Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social evolution, and his ethnography of the Iroquois. Interested in what holds societies together, he proposed the concept that the earliest human domestic institution was the matrilineal clan, not the patriarchal family. Also interested in what leads to social change, he was a contemporary of the European social theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were influenced by reading his work on social structure and material culture, the influence of technology on progress. Morgan is the only American social theorist to be cited by such diverse scholars as Marx, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud. Elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Morgan served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1880. Morgan was a Republican member of the New York State Assembly (Monroe Co., 2nd D.) in 1861, and of the New York State Senate in 1868 and 1869.

Photo of Margaret Mead

2. Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978)

With an HPI of 65.58, Margaret Mead is the 2nd most famous American Anthropologist.  Her biography has been translated into 69 different languages.

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College of Columbia University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia. Mead served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975. Mead was a communicator of anthropology in modern American and Western culture and was often controversial as an academic. Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution. She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within the context of Western cultural traditions.

Photo of Ruth Benedict

3. Ruth Benedict (1887 - 1948)

With an HPI of 65.51, Ruth Benedict is the 3rd most famous American Anthropologist.  Her biography has been translated into 50 different languages.

Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 – September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist. She was born in New York City, attended Vassar College, and graduated in 1909. After studying anthropology at the New School of Social Research under Elsie Clews Parsons, she entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1921, where she studied under Franz Boas. She received her Ph.D. and joined the faculty in 1923. Margaret Mead, with whom she shared a romantic relationship, and Marvin Opler were among her students and colleagues. Benedict was president of the American Anthropological Association and also a prominent member of the American Folklore Society. She became the first woman to be recognized as a prominent leader of a learned profession. She can be viewed as a transitional figure in her field by redirecting both anthropology and folklore away from the limited confines of culture-trait diffusion studies and towards theories of performance as integral to the interpretation of culture. She studied the relationships between personality, art, language, and culture and insisted that no trait existed in isolation or self-sufficiency, a theory that she championed in her 1934 book Patterns of Culture.

Photo of Clifford Geertz

4. Clifford Geertz (1926 - 2006)

With an HPI of 63.46, Clifford Geertz is the 4th most famous American Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.

Clifford James Geertz ( ; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades... the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States." He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Photo of Edward T. Hall

5. Edward T. Hall (1914 - 2009)

With an HPI of 58.26, Edward T. Hall is the 5th most famous American Anthropologist.  Her biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Edward Twitchell Hall, Jr. (May 16, 1914 – July 20, 2009) was an American anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher. He is remembered for developing the concept of proxemics and exploring cultural and social cohesion, and describing how people behave and react in different types of culturally defined personal space. Hall was an influential colleague of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller. Hall was born in Webster Groves, Missouri and taught at the University of Denver, Colorado, Bennington College in Vermont, Harvard Business School, Illinois Institute of Technology, Northwestern University in Illinois and others. The foundation for his lifelong research on cultural perceptions of space was laid during World War II, when he served in the U.S. Army in Europe and the Philippines. From 1933 through 1937, Hall lived and worked with the Navajo and the Hopi on Native American reservations in northeastern Arizona, the subject of his autobiographical West of the Thirties. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1942 and continued with field work and direct experience throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. During the 1950s he worked for the United States State Department, at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), teaching inter-cultural communications skills to foreign service personnel, developed the concepts of high-context and low-context cultures, and wrote several popular practical books on dealing with cross-cultural issues. He is considered a founding father of intercultural communication as an academic area of study. Throughout his career, Hall introduced a number of new concepts, including proxemics, monochronic time, polychronic time, and high-context and low-context cultures. In his second book, The Hidden Dimension (1966), he describes the culturally specific temporal and spatial dimensions that surround each of us, such as the physical distances people maintain in different contexts. In The Silent Language (1959), Hall coined the term "polychronic" to describe the ability to attend to multiple events simultaneously, as opposed to "monochronic" individuals and cultures who tend to handle events sequentially. In the 1960s, Hall published his theory of proxemics, the study of the human use of space, creating a new field of research investigating the nature of personal and public space, and how it may differ between cultures. In 1976, he released his third book, Beyond Culture, which is notable for having developed the idea of extension transference; by an extension, he simply means any technological item, from clothes to laptops. He brings to our attention the fact that these 'extensions' only help us perform certain functions, but they as extensions will never quite be able to carry out these functions by themselves (for example, think about computers, airplanes, etc. We can fly with airplanes, but we can't on our own and nor can airplanes fly 'on their own'). His biggest claim is that culture itself is an extension of man. Extensions also exist in their own evolutionary realm, as well. That is, they evolve on their own and do not directly influence human evolution. The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time (1983) describes different types of time in a provocative cross-cultural exploration of how time varies across cultures. Hall develops a classification system of nine different types of time. Particularly interesting are his ideas about how rhythms and music structure cultural interaction in different cultures. The 'transference' of 'extension transference' is a term he coined to describe when people regard a symbol to actually be its referent. The clearest example of this would be language; like when people do not realize that words are merely symbolic to their referents. For example, there is nothing inherently watery about the physical object water, at least in terms of the symbolic acoustic properties that are produced when someone utters water. Evidence for this would be the fact that across languages there are thousands of unique words that all refer to water. Culture, as an extension, is also a good example; extension transference of culture happens naturally when people are unaware of the extent to which culture shapes how they perceive time and space, or that culture shapes their perception of them at all. Time and space are the two prominent aspects that Hall in particular focuses on in many of his works. He died at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico on July 20, 2009. According to Nina Brown, the work of Hall was so groundbreaking that it created a multitude of other areas for research. One of the most widely sought after topics of anthropology is an idea that was first introduced by Edward Hall: Anthropology of Space. Brown goes on to mention that the Anthropology of Space has essentially opened the door to dozens of new topics. Along with influencing the Anthropology of Space, Hall's research had a substantial influence on the development of intercultural communication as a research topic. Since at least 1990, he has been acknowledged frequently for his role in introducing nonverbal aspects of communication, specifically proxemics, the study of the social uses of space, the investigation of communication between members of different cultures. For example, Robert Shuter, a well-known intercultural communication researcher, commented: "Edward Hall's research reflects the regimen and passion of an anthropologist: a deep regard for culture explored principally by descriptive, qualitative methods... The challenge for intercultural communication... is to develop a research direction and teaching agenda that returns culture to preeminence and reflects the roots of the field as represented in Edward Hall's early research." What was particularly innovative about Hall's early work is that instead of focusing on a single culture at a time, or cross-cultural comparison, as was typical in 1950s’ anthropology, he responded to the needs of his students at the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State to help them understand interactions between members of different cultures. Hall points out that the only environment in which classroom dialogue is encountered is simply in the classroom, ergo it served the students little use when actually in the foreign country of interest. At the same time, and in response to the same students, he narrowed his focus from an entire culture, as was then standard within anthropology, to smaller moments of interaction. Colleagues working with him at FSI at the time included Henry Lee Smith, George L. Trager, Charles F. Hockett, and Ray Birdwhistell. Between them, they used descriptive linguistics as a model for not only proxemics but also kinesics and paralanguage. Symbolic interactionism The Silent Language (1959) The Hidden Dimension (1966) The Fourth Dimension In Architecture: The Impact of Building on Behavior (1975, co-authored with Mildred Reed Hall) Beyond Culture (1976) The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time (1983) Handbook for Proxemic Research Hidden Differences: Doing Business with the Japanese An Anthropology of Everyday Life: An Autobiography (1992, Doubleday, New York) Understanding Cultural Differences: Germans, French and Americans (1990, Yarmouth, Maine) West of the Thirties. Discoveries Among the Navajo and Hopi (1994, Doubleday, New York etc.) Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy (1990). "Notes in the History of Intercultural Communication: The Foreign Service Institute and the Mandate for Intercultural Training". Quarterly Journal of Speech. 76 (3): 262–281. doi:10.1080/00335639009383919. Edward T. Hall: Proxemic Theory, 1966 by Nina Brown Edward T. Hall and the History of Intercultural Communication: The United States and Japan by Everett M. Rogers, William B. Hart and Yoshitaka Miike Ariane Laroux : Portraits Parlés, Entretiens et portraits d'Edward T. Hall aux éditions de l'Age d'Homme (2006) Obituary-Edward Hall Loved New Mexico at the Wayback Machine (archived March 14, 2012) Obituary, NYTimes [1]

Photo of Marshall Sahlins

6. Marshall Sahlins (1930 - 2021)

With an HPI of 56.79, Marshall Sahlins is the 6th most famous American Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 29 different languages.

Marshall David Sahlins ( SAH-linz; December 27, 1930 – April 5, 2021) was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Photo of A. L. Kroeber

7. A. L. Kroeber (1876 - 1960)

With an HPI of 56.61, A. L. Kroeber is the 7th most famous American Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 42 different languages.

Alfred Louis Kroeber ( KROH-bər; June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through 1947. Kroeber provided detailed information about Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi people, whom he studied over a period of years. He was the father of the acclaimed novelist, poet, and writer of short stories Ursula K. Le Guin.

Photo of Ann Dunham

8. Ann Dunham (1942 - 1995)

With an HPI of 56.23, Ann Dunham is the 8th most famous American Anthropologist.  Her biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Stanley Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995) was an American anthropologist who specialized in the economic anthropology and rural development of Indonesia. She was the mother of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. Born in Wichita, Kansas, Dunham studied at the East–West Center and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu, where she attained a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology (1967), and later received Master of Arts (1974) and PhD (1992) degrees, also in anthropology. She also attended the University of Washington in Seattle from 1961 to 1962. Interested in craftsmanship, weaving, and the role of women in cottage industries, Dunham's research focused on women's work on the island of Java and blacksmithing in Indonesia. To address the problem of poverty in rural villages, she created microcredit programs while working as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development. Dunham was also employed by the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and she consulted with the Asian Development Bank in Gujranwala, Pakistan. Towards the latter part of her life, she worked with Bank Rakyat Indonesia, where she helped apply her research to the largest microfinance program in the world. After her son was elected president, interest renewed in Dunham's work: the University of Hawaiʻi held a symposium about her research; an exhibition of Dunham's Indonesian batik textile collection toured the United States; and in December 2009, Duke University Press published Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia, a book based on Dunham's original 1992 dissertation. Janny Scott, an author and former New York Times reporter, published a biography of her titled A Singular Woman in 2011. Posthumous interest has also led to the creation of the Ann Dunham Soetoro Endowment in the Anthropology Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, as well as the Ann Dunham Soetoro Graduate Fellowships, intended to fund students associated with the East–West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. In an interview, Barack Obama referred to his mother as "the dominant figure in my formative years ... The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics."

Photo of Marvin Harris

9. Marvin Harris (1927 - 2001)

With an HPI of 55.92, Marvin Harris is the 9th most famous American Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.

Marvin Harris (August 18, 1927 – October 25, 2001) was an American anthropologist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York City. A prolific writer, he was highly influential in the development of cultural materialism and environmental determinism. In his work, he combined Karl Marx's emphasis on the forces of production with Thomas Malthus's insights on the impact of demographic factors on other parts of the sociocultural system. Labeling demographic and production factors as infrastructure, Harris posited these factors as key in determining a society's social structure and culture. After the publication of The Rise of Anthropological Theory in 1968, Harris helped focus the interest of anthropologists in cultural-ecological relationships for the rest of his career. Many of his publications gained wide circulation among lay readers. Over the course of his professional life, Harris drew both a loyal following and a considerable amount of criticism. He became a regular fixture at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, where he would subject scholars to intense questioning from the floor, podium, or bar. He is considered a generalist, who had an interest in the global processes that account for human origins and the evolution of human cultures. In his final book, Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times, Harris argued that the political consequences of postmodern theory were harmful, a critique similar to those later developed by philosopher Richard Wolin and others.

Photo of Henry Fairfield Osborn

10. Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857 - 1935)

With an HPI of 54.22, Henry Fairfield Osborn is the 10th most famous American Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. (August 8, 1857 – November 6, 1935) was an American paleontologist, geologist and eugenics advocate. He was the president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years and a cofounder of the American Eugenics Society.

People

Pantheon has 26 people classified as American anthropologists born between 1805 and 1961. Of these 26, 3 (11.54%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American anthropologists include Helen Fisher, Gayle Rubin, and Eugenie Scott. The most famous deceased American anthropologists include Lewis H. Morgan, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict. As of April 2024, 3 new American anthropologists have been added to Pantheon including James C. Scott, Julian Steward, and John Tooby.

Living American Anthropologists

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Deceased American Anthropologists

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Newly Added American Anthropologists (2024)

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Overlapping Lives

Which Anthropologists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 21 most globally memorable Anthropologists since 1700.