Ruth was born in New York City on June 5th, 1887. Her father died when she was only 21 months old and she grew up with a morbid fascination with death and had long periods of depression as she grep older. She excelled in school and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College in 1909.
In 1914 Ruth married a bio chemistry professor from Cornell Medical School, Stanley Benedict. Ruth occupied herself with social work and writing a book but by Christmas of 1916 she had come to the realization that she would never achieve personal happiness or fulfillment just being a wife. For the next four years she saw her husband only on weekends and from 1930 on they ceased meeting all together. Neither remarried and Stanley left her his entire estate upon his death.
In 1919 Ruth had begun taking anthropology courses at the New School for Social Research. In 1923 she earned her doctorate from Columbia University studying under Franz Boas. From 1922 to 1931 she made many field trips to the West and Southwest in order to study various indian cultures. This resulted in two books of folktales and mythology of various tribes.
In 1924 Ruth published what is still considered the definitive introduction to anthropology, Patterns of Culture, establishing her as one of the leading female anthropologists of her day.
From 1943 to 1945 she was special advisor to the Office of War Information on issues of peoples of occupied territories and enemy lands. Her long standing interest in Japanese culture bore fruit in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword published in 1946. She returned to Columbia in 1946 to teach and in 1947 was president of the American Anthropological Association. By this time she was being acclaimed as the most outstanding U.S. Anthropologist. In 1948 she achieved full professorship at Columbia.
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