French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was honored on his 100th birthday.
In a tribute Nov. 28, UNESCO director general Koichiro Matsuura called Levi-Strauss “one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century” whose work “has radically changed our understanding of the world.”
Numerous publications and other events marked the centennial in France.
Levi-Strauss was born into a Jewish family on Nov. 28, 1908. He fled France and spent the World War II years in New York. Much of his work dealt with myth, race and kinship. Among his best-known books are “Structural Anthropology” and “The Savage Mind.”
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