Profession: anthropologist

Dewey taught Benedict first; then Boas, who became a strong influence on her work, an academic colleague, and as ‘Papa Franz’ a father-figure. Benedict persuaded her student (and then lifelong friend and probable lover) Mead to switch from psychology to anthropology. A close friendship with Sapir started when he read her dissertation, but waned as she became closer to Mead; their complicated three-way relationship embraced the love of poetry. Mead’s affairs with men may have fuelled a famous quarrel she and Benedict had over Michelangelo’s Sybils in the Sistine Chapel. Maslow found her inspirational.

Boas (who was hugely influential) and Benedict taught Mead, Benedict in particular becoming a lifelong friend and, it is now accepted, sometime lover. Sapir, Benedict and Mead shared a love of poetry, reading and commenting on each others’ verse. Hurston was also a professional colleague, while Baldwin collaborated on a book about race. Bateson was her third husband, whose photo she kept by her until death; Lévi-Strauss (then lesser-known than her) met her when he exiled himself in New York; Maslow regarded her as his mentor.

Mauss taught and inspired him. Both Rouch and Dieterlen were students of his as well as of Mauss; Dieterlen became his collaborator, and published the work he left unfinished at death. Amadou worked with him in Paris, while Leiris joined an ambitious African expedition he led, published his travel diary, and accordingly fell out with him – they ended up violently at odds with one other.

A notably influential teacher, Sapir, Benedict, Mead, Freyre, Hurston and Kroeber were among his students. He himself studied with Bastian and Virchow. Jakobson got to know him on arrival in exile in New York, DuBois invited him to speak to his students, Dewey corresponded about academic freedom, while Washington and Cattell were other correspondents. Lévi-Strauss described his meeting with Boas as definitive, was impressed by his clarity even after drinking “important” amounts of alcohol, and was sitting beside him at a banquet when Boas, giving a speech about Nazi anti-semitism, suddenly died.

He was impressed by Jakobson’s clarity even after imbibing “important quantities” of alcohol. Their friendship helped define stucturalism, while that with Boas (who died beside him at a banquet) was also influential. He discussed exogamous relations with Mauss, took Nizan’s suggestion to teach philosophy in São Paulo, and was a long-term friend of Merleau-Ponty. He sailed to Martinique with his friend Masson, Lam, Brauner, and Breton. He shared a bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village with Breton, Ernst and Tanguy; Perrin was a fellow academic in exile. De Beauvoir praised his accounts of female rôles in non-western societies.