For the Human Race

Death came in Manhattan last fortnight to Columbia's Professor Franz Boas, who more than 30 years ago scientifically demolished "this Nordic nonsense" in The Mind of Primitive Man, a book which has since been called the Magna Charta of self-respect for the so-called lower races.

P:For 59 years he measured, compared,' talked facts about humanity, trained most of the outstanding U.S. anthropologists of today.*

Boas wrote, in a letter to TIME in 1936: "The assumption of the biological homogeneity of any race is a fiction. Every race contains many family strain? which are biologically distinct. . . . The physiological and psychological behavior of the individual depends only in part upon his hereditary characteristics. These differ widely within every population and are strongly overlaid by outer, cultural influences which modify the hereditary traits. . . . Personality cannot be assumed to be determined by the so-called racial groups ... but is a matter that must be determined individually."

After his retirement in 1936 Boas became an active crusader. Said he: "Hitler taught me that it is not only necessary to discover scientific truths about man; it is necessary to spread them in the world. Science alone was not enough to check the wide acceptance of the race nonsense of Naziism."

He also said: "If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be represented."

When death came to Franz Boas, 84, he had earned the title of a great humanitarian.

* Among his students: Margaret Mead (And Keep Your Powder Dry, TIME, Nov. 30), Colum bia's Ruth Benedict, Yale's Edward Sapir, Northwestern's Melville Jean Herskovits, the late Elsie Clews Parsons, University of Cali fornia's Alfred L. Kroeber, Harvard's Alfred Marston Tozzer, University of New Mexico's Leslie Spier, University of Pennsylvania's John Alden Mason.

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