Back in the Roaring Twenties, Columbia University's Franz Boas (1858–1942), the "father of American anthropology," was maneuvering to break what he called the "shackles that tradition has laid upon us." To that end, Boas supported the "field work" of young anthropology students, including Margaret Mead, who set out to prove what Boas wanted her to prove: that happy primitive people had better sex, younger, than uptight Westerners.