Columbia University anthropologist who wrote an early text on indigenous art forms. Boas was the son of Meier Boas and Sophie Meyer (Boas). He attended Bonn, Heidelberg, and Kiel universities studying physics, mathematics, and geography, the latter under the distinguished Theobald Fischer. Boas obtained his doctorate in physics at the University of Kiel in 1881. A non-religious Jew, he was fascinated by the theories of geographical determinism in Europe at the time.