Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960) was one of the most influential figures in American anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey and attended Columbia College at the age of 16, earning an A. B. in English in 1896, and an M. A. in Romantic drama in 1897. He received his doctorate under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, basing his dissertation on decorative symbolism on his field work among the Arapaho. It was the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He spent most of his career in California, primarily at the University of California, Berkeley where he worked as both a Professor of Anthropology and the Director of what was then The University of California Museum of Anthropology (now the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology). The anthropology department's headquarters building at the University of California is known as Kroeber Hall. He was associated with Berkeley until his retirement in 1946. His works include: Indian Myths of South Central California (1907), The Religion of the Indians of California (1907) and Handbook of the Indians of California (1925).