Margaret Mead: An American Oracle

大多数科学家在一般公众看来可能是相当乏味的一群人。 科学突破改变了我们的生活，但科学家本身很少成为容易被公众认可的人物。 很少有科学家像理查德·费曼那样在“挑战者”号的调查中引起全国的关注，或者像卡尔·萨根那样大胆地在自己的电视连续剧中发表自己的观点。 这些“公共”科学家中女性更少。 然而，有一位女性在公众眼中脱颖而出，成为一位典型的科学家：玛格丽特·米德。 从她27岁时出版《萨摩亚成年》开始，玛格丽特·米德将她的人类学职业生涯定位于不仅提高她在该领域的地位，而且成为Yans-McLaughlin博士所说的科学的“公共神谕”。 而不是解决问题的利益，以一个狭隘的学术专业，玛格丽特米德总是审查问题的利益，以广大公众。 在第一本书中，她谈到了性和性别，成长，代沟和现代世界的变化。 Yans-McLaughlin博士认为，米德（1901-1978）将她的整个职业生涯都奉献给了她的研究，以吸引最广泛的大众兴趣。她如何在她的职业生涯中做到这一点，以及它对她自己的科学研究，人类学学科和美国科学实践的影响将是本研究的中心。 该项目致力于并承诺为人类学史、社会科学史、科学中的性别研究和科学专业中的妇女史方面的学术文献做出贡献。

Most scientists may seem to the general public to be a rather colorless lot. Scientific breakthroughs revolutionize our lives, but the scientists themselves rarely become figures who are easily recognized by the public. Few scientists have the flare of a Richard Feynman who captured national attention during the Challenger investigations or the audacity of a Carl Sagan to hold forth on his own television series. Fewer still, of these "public" scientists are women. Yet one woman stands out as a quintessential scientist in the public eye: Margaret Mead. From her publication of Coming of Age in Samoa when she was 27 years old, Margaret Mead oriented her career in anthropology not only to advance her position in that field but to become what Dr. Yans-McLaughlin has called a "public oracle" for science. Rather than addressing questions of interests to a narrow academic specialty, Margaret Mead always examined question which were of interest to the general public. In that first book, she addressed issues of sex and gender, growing up, the generation gap, and change in the modern world. Dr. Yans-McLaughlin argues that Mead (1901-1978) devoted her entire career to situate her research in a way that appealed to the broadest of popular interest. How she did this throughout her career and its affect on her own scientific research, on the discipline of anthropology, and on the practice of science in general in the United States will be the center of this research. This project engages and promises to contribute to scholarly literature in the history of anthropology, the history of social sciences, the study of gender in science and the history of women in the scientific professions.