Short answers, pulled from the story.
The term anthropology first appeared in Renaissance Germany through the works of Magnus Hundt and Otto Casmann. This early usage predates the formalization of the discipline in the late 19th century.
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, which provided the epiphany that anthropologists had been seeking. Darwin's theories suggested that similarities between animals, languages, and folkways resulted from unknown laws of evolution.
The Ethnological Society of Paris formed in 1839 and the Ethnological Society of London established in 1843 were early organizations that focused on methodically studying human races. These groups often operated with the implicit goal of categorizing and ranking different human populations.
Franz Boas and Bronisław Malinowski pioneered the method of participant observation in the early 20th century. Malinowski established the standard for fieldwork during the 1910s through his work in the Trobriand Islands.
Franz Boas developed the four-field approach which integrates biological, cultural, archaeological, and linguistic anthropology into a single framework. Biological anthropology studies humans and primates, archaeology explores human activity through physical remains, linguistic anthropology analyzes language, and cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning.
The controversy intensified in the 1960s and 1970s with the Vietnam War, leading to numerous resolutions condemning the war at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. The field's ethical codes were subsequently amended to prohibit secret research and debriefings.