German-American cultural anthropologist and linguist; the father of ethnolinguistics. Sapir studied anthropology under Boas, taking his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1909. He did pioneering work on the comparative study of Amerindian languages, and also had great influence on the formation of the concept of culture in American anthropology. His role as an early source of theoretical inspiration for American anthropologists was profound, especially on the background of the intellectual climate encouraged by Boas, who was skeptical to undue generalization. Along with Benjamin Whorf, Sapir proposed the widely debated "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis", which assigns language a very strong role in the formation of culture.

To see texts on AnthroBase dealing with Edward Sapir, see:
http://www.anthrobase.com/Browse/Cit/S/edward_sapir.htm