Ralph Linton (27 February 1893 – 24 December 1953) was an American anthropologist of the mid-20th century, particularly remembered for his texts The Study of Man (1936) and The Tree of Culture (1955).

He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his master's degree studying with Frank Speck while undertaking additional archaeological field work in New Jersey and New Mexico.

When America entered World War I, Linton enlisted and served in France during 1917–1919 with Battery D, 149th Field Artillery, 42nd (Rainbow) Division.

[3] Whatever the cause, shortly after his return to the United States, he transferred from Columbia to Harvard, where he studied with Earnest Hooton, Alfred Tozzer, and Roland Dixon.

[1] After a year of classes at Harvard, Linton proceeded to do more fieldwork, first at Mesa Verde and then as a member of the Bayard Dominick Expedition led by E.S.C.

Up to this point, Linton had been primarily a researcher in a rather romantic vein, and his years at Wisconsin were the period in which he developed his ability to teach and publish as a theoretician.

This fact, combined with his penchant for popular writing and his intellectual encounter with Radcliffe-Brown (then at the University of Chicago), led to the publication of his textbook The Study of Man (1936).

According to Sidney Mintz who was a colleague of Linton at Yale, he even once jokingly boasted that he had killed Benedict using a Tanala magic charm.

It was during the war that Linton also undertook a long trip to South America, where he experienced a coronary occlusion that left him in precarious health.

Linton noted that while the definitions of the two concepts are clear and distinct, it is not always easy to identify whether an individual's status is ascribed or achieved.

Throughout this early period Linton became interested in the problem of acculturation, working with Robert Redfield and Melville Herskovits on a prestigious Social Science Research Council subcommittee of the Committee on Personality and Culture.

Linton's interest in culture and personality also expressed itself in the form of a seminar he organized with Abram Kardiner at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.