Ruth BenedictRUTH BENEDICT (1887-1948) was one of the twentieth century's foremost anthropologists and helped to shape the discipline in the United States and around the world. Benedict was a student and later a colleague of Franz Boas at Columbia, where she taugt from 1924. Margaret Mead was one of her students. Benedict's contributions to the field of cultural anthropology are often cited today. Read More Read Less