The Most Famous
ANTHROPOLOGISTS from France
This page contains a list of the greatest French Anthropologists. The pantheon dataset contains 93 Anthropologists, 11 of which were born in France. This makes France the birth place of the 3rd most number of Anthropologists behind United States, and United Kingdom.
Top 10
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary French Anthropologists of all time. This list of famous French Anthropologists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of French Anthropologists.
1. Paul Broca (1824 - 1880)
With an HPI of 65.76, Paul Broca is the most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages on wikipedia.
Pierre Paul Broca (, also UK: , US: , French: [pɔl bʁɔka]; 28 June 1824 – 9 July 1880) was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that is named after him. Broca's area is involved with language. His work revealed that the brains of patients with aphasia contained lesions in a particular part of the cortex, in the left frontal region. This was the first anatomical proof of localization of brain function. Broca's work contributed to the development of physical anthropology, advancing the science of anthropometry, and craniometry, in particular, the now-discredited practice of determining intelligence. He was engaged in comparative anatomy of primates and humans and proposed that Negroes were an intermediate form between apes and Europeans. He saw each racial group as its own species and believed racial mixing eventually led to sterility.
2. Marc Augé (1935 - 2023)
With an HPI of 57.50, Marc Augé is the 2nd most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.
Marc Augé (2 September 1935 – 24 July 2023) was a French anthropologist. In an essay and book of the same title, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), Augé coined the phrase "non-place" to refer to spaces where concerns of relations, history, and identity are erased. Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket.
3. Jacques de Morgan (1857 - 1924)
With an HPI of 56.04, Jacques de Morgan is the 3rd most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 23 different languages.
Jean-Jacques de Morgan (3 June 1857 – 14 June 1924) was a French mining engineer, geologist, and archaeologist. He was the director of antiquities in Egypt during the 19th century, and excavated in Memphis and Dahshur, providing many drawings of many Egyptian pyramids. He also worked at Stonehenge, and Persepolis, and many other sites. He also went to Russian Armenia, as manager of a copper mine at Akhtala. "The Caucasus is of special interest in the study of the origins of metals; it is the easternmost point from which prehistoric remains are known; older than Europe and Greece, it still retains the traces of those civilizations that were the cradle of our own." In 1887-89 he unearthed 576 graves around Alaverdi and Akhatala, near the Tiflis-Alexandropol railway line.
4. Pierre Clastres (1934 - 1977)
With an HPI of 55.41, Pierre Clastres is the 4th most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.
Pierre Clastres (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ klastʁ]; 17 May 1934 – 29 July 1977) was a French anthropologist, ethnographer, and ethnologist. He is best known for his contributions to the field of political anthropology, with his fieldwork among the Guayaki in Paraguay and his theory of stateless societies. An anarchist seeking an alternative to the hierarchized Western societies, he mostly researched Indigenous peoples of the Americas in which the power was not considered coercive and chieftains were powerless. With a background in literature and philosophy, Clastres started studying anthropology with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Alfred Métraux in the 1950s. Between 1963 and 1974 he traveled five times to South America to do fieldwork among the Guaraní, the Chulupi, and the Yanomami. Clastres mostly published essays and, because of his premature death, his work was unfinished and scattered. His signature work is the essay collection Society Against the State (1974) and his bibliography also includes Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians (1972), Le Grand Parler (1974), and Archeology of Violence (1980).
5. Marcel Griaule (1898 - 1956)
With an HPI of 54.15, Marcel Griaule is the 5th most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.
Marcel Griaule (16 May 1898 – 23 February 1956) was a French author and anthropologist known for his studies of the Dogon people of West Africa, and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France. He worked together with Germaine Dieterlen and Jean Rouch on African subjects. His publications number over 170 books and articles for scholarly journals.
6. Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854 - 1936)
With an HPI of 52.55, Georges Vacher de Lapouge is the 6th most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Count Georges Vacher de Lapouge (French: [vaʃe də lapuʒ]; 12 December 1854 – 20 February 1936) was a French anthropologist and a theoretician of eugenics and scientific racism. He is known as the founder of anthroposociology, the anthropological and sociological study of race as a means of establishing the superiority of certain peoples.
7. Alfred Sauvy (1898 - 1990)
With an HPI of 51.39, Alfred Sauvy is the 7th most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Alfred Sauvy (31 October 1898 – 30 October 1990) was a demographer, anthropologist and historian of the French economy. Sauvy coined the term Third World ("Tiers Monde") in reference to countries that were unaligned with either the Western bloc or the Eastern bloc during the Cold War.
8. Maurice Godelier (b. 1934)
With an HPI of 50.70, Maurice Godelier is the 8th most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Maurice Godelier (born February 28, 1934) is a French anthropologist who works as a Director of Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He is one of the most influential French anthropologists and is best known as one of the earliest advocates of Marxism's incorporation into anthropology. He is also known for his field work among the Baruya in Papua New Guinea from the 1960s to the 1980s.
9. Georges Balandier (1920 - 2016)
With an HPI of 49.40, Georges Balandier is the 9th most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Georges Balandier (21 December 1920 – 5 October 2016) was a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Balandier was born in Aillevillers-et-Lyaumont. He was a professor at the Sorbonne (Université René Descartes, Paris-V), and is a member of the Center for African Studies (Centre d'études africaines [Ceaf]), a research center of the École pratique des hautes études (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences). He held for many years the Editorship of Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie (previously held by his mentor Georges Gurvitch) and edited the series Sociologie d'Aujourd'hui at Presses Universitaires de France. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1976. He died on 5 October 2016 at the age of 95.
10. Philippe Descola (b. 1949)
With an HPI of 48.75, Philippe Descola is the 10th most famous French Anthropologist. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Philippe Descola, FBA (French: [fi.lip de.skɔ.la]; born 19 June 1949) is a French anthropologist noted for studies of the Achuar, one of several Jivaroan peoples, and for his contributions to anthropological theory.
People
Pantheon has 13 people classified as French anthropologists born between 1824 and 1949. Of these 13, 2 (15.38%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living French anthropologists include Maurice Godelier, and Philippe Descola. The most famous deceased French anthropologists include Paul Broca, Marc Augé, and Jacques de Morgan. As of April 2024, 2 new French anthropologists have been added to Pantheon including Philippe Descola, and Yves Coppens.
Living French Anthropologists
Go to all RankingsDeceased French Anthropologists
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Paul Broca
1824 - 1880
HPI: 65.76
Marc Augé
1935 - 2023
HPI: 57.50
Jacques de Morgan
1857 - 1924
HPI: 56.04
Pierre Clastres
1934 - 1977
HPI: 55.41
Marcel Griaule
1898 - 1956
HPI: 54.15
Georges Vacher de Lapouge
1854 - 1936
HPI: 52.55
Alfred Sauvy
1898 - 1990
HPI: 51.39
Georges Balandier
1920 - 2016
HPI: 49.40
Yves Coppens
1934 - 2022
HPI: 47.64
Marcellin Boule
1861 - 1942
HPI: 46.32
Françoise Héritier
1933 - 2017
HPI: 45.62
Newly Added French Anthropologists (2024)
Go to all RankingsOverlapping Lives
Which Anthropologists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 11 most globally memorable Anthropologists since 1700.
