Paul Radin was born on April 2, 1883 in Lodz, Poland. He was the son of Dr. Adolf M. and Johanna Theodor Radin. He attended school at City College and received his bachelors degree in 1902. He pursued several different courses of graduate studies, and eventually received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1911, where he studied under Franz Boas.
Radin was predominantly an ethnologist who conducted extensive fieldwork among the Anishinabe and Ho-Chunk Indians of the Great Lakes region. He was the head of the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University, and taught at several schools including the University of California, Berkeley, Cambridge University, Fisk University, the University of Chicago, Kenyon College and Black Mountain College.
Radin wrote several books and articles including A Study of Comparative Literature Part II:The Culture of the Winnebago as Described by Themselves (1949), Social Anthropology (1932), The World of the Primitive Man (1953), and The Method and Theory of Ethnology (1933), and most notably The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (1956), among others. His scholarly papers, manuscripts, correspondence, and ethnological recordings are housed at Marquette University.
This picture reprinted with permission from the American Anthropological Association. American Anthropologist 61, 1959. Not for reprint.
"Paul Radin." http://www.biography.com/search/article.do?id=9450446
American Anthropologist 61, 1959 American Anthropological Association.
Written by: Nikki Akins
Edited by: Lisa Mayer, 2007
Edited by: Emily Hildebrant, 2007