Barbara Gallatin Anderson (1921–2008)

Barbara Gallatin was born in San Francisco, the daughter of an Irish-American former boxer and an Italian-American homemaker. She earned her bachelor's degree from San Francisco College for Women in 1942 and went on to earn a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1958.

In 1944, she married Benjamin Asaro; after the couple divorced, she remarried to Robert T. Anderson.

Barbara Gallatin Anderson began teaching anthropology at California State University, East Bay, on a part-time basis in 1964. and five years later became a full-time professor.
She was a member of the CSUEB faculty through 1977, although she went on leave periodically starting in 1974, when she began teaching at Southern Methodist University in Texas. Her research interests took her around the world to countries such as France, Thailand, the Philippines, India, Morocco, Japan, China, and Russia. She wrote and collaborated on several books, including the textbook Medical Anthropology with George Foster.
After she became a professor emerita, Dr. Anderson continued to write and teach at SMU, completing two autobiographical works: First Fieldwork: The Misadventures of an Anthropologist (1989) and Around the World in Thirty Years: Life as a Cultural Anthropologist (1999).