Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist and women’s rights activist (1901-1978). During her career she made 24 research trips to the South Pacific to study six different cultural societies and is credited with changing the way academia studies various human cultures.

Mead worked on the Committee on Food Habits during the second World War, she was a curator of ethnology at the Amercian Museum of Nature History, and a professor at several different universities during her career.

Sources:

“Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter M” (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
“Margaret Mead Biography.” The Biography.com Website. Ed. Biography.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2015.

p. 94 in: Wheaton, J., and R. Vangermeersch, 1999. University of Rhode Island. Arcadia Publishing Company, Charleston, SC. ISBN 9780738502144 Web version.