 In 1910, Franz Boas published the first results from his
classic study, Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of
Immigrants. This landmark work became controversial almost
immediately, as it challenged many prevailing ideas about
human biology and race. The most striking finding at the time
was that head shape—long thought to be a fixed, purely
hereditary marker of race—was in fact sensitive to changes
in environment within a single generation.
Boas's most impressive response to the controversy was his
decision in 1928 to publish 504 pages of raw, handwritten
data from the immigrant study as Materials for the Study
of Inheritance in Man. He explained: "It seemed necessary
to make the data accessible, because a great many questions
relating to heredity and environmental influences may be treated
by means of this material." In the same spirit, here
we provide the machine-readable data set
that is the basis of our recent reanalysis
of Boas's data set. You will also find links to relevant publications
and other sites of interest.
Clarence C. Gravlee, H.
Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard
7 April 2003
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