that she forced the students to think in an unconventional way. When Boas retired in 1937, most of his students considered Ruth Benedict to be the obvious choice for the head of the anthropology department. However, the administration of Columbia was not as progressive in its attitude towards female professionals as Boas had been, and the university president, Nicholas Murray Butler, was eager to curb the influence of the Boasians whom he considered to be political radicals. Instead, Ralph Linton, one of Boas's former students, a World War I veteran and a fierce critic of Benedict's "Culture and Personality" approach, was named head of the department. Benedict was understandably insulted by Linton's appointment, and the Columbia department was divided between the two rival figures of Linton and Benedict, both accomplished anthropologists with influential publications, neither of whom ever mentioned the work of the other. Relationship with Margaret Mead Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict were two of the most influential and famous anthropologists of their time. Both got along well with their shared passion for each other's work and the sense of pride that they felt in being successful working women while that was still uncommon. They were frequently known to critique each other's work; they entered into a companionship that began through their work, but during its early period, it also had an erotic character. Both Benedict and Mead wanted to dislodge stereotypes about women that were widely believed during their time and to show people that working women could also be successful even though working society was seen as a man's world. In her memoir about her parents, With a Daughter's Eye, Mead's daughter strongly implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual. In 1946, Benedict received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women. After Benedict died of a heart attack in 1948, Mead kept the legacy of Benedict's work going by supervising projects that Benedict would have looked after and by editing and publishing notes from studies that Benedict had collected throughout her life. Postwar Before World War II began, Benedict had been giving lectures at the Bryn Mawr College for the Anna Howard Shaw Memorial Lectureship. The lectures were focused around the idea of synergy. However, World War II made her focus on other areas of concentration of anthropology, and the lectures were never presented in their entirety. After the war,