World renowned anthropologist and intellectual Claude Levi-Strauss has died at the age of 100, his publisher in Paris has announced.
Widely considered the father of modern anthropology and the man who helped shape Western thinking about human civilisation, Claude Levi-Strauss was born into an affluent French Jewish family in Brussels on November 28th 1908.
He studied law at the University of Paris and then philosophy at the Sorbonne. He then went on to teach in Sao Paulo in Brazil and conducted much research there.
He was
awarded honorary doctorates for universities such as Oxford, Yale and Harvard and also from universities in Mexico, Sweden and Canada.
His 1955 book
Tristes Tropiques is widely considered to be the book which shot him to prominence and the book is thought of as one of the 20th century's major works.
Levi-Strauss had a career that spanned six decades and during this time he also wrote books such as
The Savage Mind in 1963 and
The Raw and the Cooked in 1964 as well as many other literary and anthropological classics.
He is though of as having reshaped the field of anthropology as well as introducing new concepts regarding patterns of behaviour and thought, particularly myths, in modern and also primitive society.
Having a keen interest in mythology he
said once, "I claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact."
The office of the president of The School for the Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, Paris, announced that Claude Levi-Strauss died over the weekend.
Academie Francaise, of which Levi Strauss was a member, said today that they were planning a tribute for him later in the week, possibly Thursday.
He is survived by two sons, Laurent and Roman.
