The Most Famous

ANTHROPOLOGISTS from United Kingdom

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This page contains a list of the greatest British Anthropologists. The pantheon dataset contains 93 Anthropologists, 12 of which were born in United Kingdom. This makes United Kingdom the birth place of the 2nd most number of Anthropologists.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary British Anthropologists of all time. This list of famous British 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 British Anthropologists.

Photo of James George Frazer

1. James George Frazer (1854 - 1941)

With an HPI of 68.70, James George Frazer is the most famous British Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 51 different languages on wikipedia.

Sir James George Frazer (; 1 January 1854 – 7 May 1941) was a Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion.

Photo of Jane Goodall

2. Jane Goodall (b. 1934)

With an HPI of 68.62, Jane Goodall is the 2nd most famous British Anthropologist.  Her biography has been translated into 77 different languages.

Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall; 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English zoologist, primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years' studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme and has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. As of 2022, she is on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project. In April 2002, she was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Goodall is an honorary member of the World Future Council.

Photo of Edward Burnett Tylor

3. Edward Burnett Tylor (1832 - 1917)

With an HPI of 68.12, Edward Burnett Tylor is the 3rd most famous British Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 49 different languages.

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (2 October 1832 – 2 January 1917) was an English anthropologist, and professor of anthropology. Tylor's ideas typify 19th-century cultural evolutionism. In his works Primitive Culture (1871) and Anthropology (1881), he defined the context of the scientific study of anthropology, based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Lyell. He believed that there was a functional basis for the development of society and religion, which he determined was universal. Tylor maintained that all societies passed through three basic stages of development: from savagery, through barbarism to civilization. Tylor is a founding figure of the science of social anthropology, and his scholarly works helped to build the discipline of anthropology in the nineteenth century. He believed that "research into the history and prehistory of man [...] could be used as a basis for the reform of British society." Tylor reintroduced the term animism (faith in the individual soul or anima of all things and natural manifestations) into common use. He regarded animism as the first phase in the development of religions.

Photo of Gregory Bateson

4. Gregory Bateson (1904 - 1980)

With an HPI of 64.19, Gregory Bateson is the 4th most famous British Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979). In Palo Alto, California, Bateson and in these days his non-colleagues developed the double-bind theory of schizophrenia. Bateson's interest in systems theory forms a thread running through his work. He was one of the original members of the core group of the Macy conferences in Cybernetics (1941–1960), and the later set on Group Processes (1954–1960), where he represented the social and behavioral sciences. He was interested in the relationship of these fields to epistemology. His association with the editor and author Stewart Brand helped widen his influence.

Photo of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown

5. Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881 - 1955)

With an HPI of 61.63, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown is the 5th most famous British Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 37 different languages.

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown, FBA (born Alfred Reginald Brown; 1881–1955) was an English social anthropologist who helped further develop the theory of structural functionalism. He conducted fieldwork in the Andaman Islands and Western Australia, which became the basis of his later books. He held academic appointments at universities in Cape Town, Sydney, Chicago, and Oxford, and sought to use model the field of anthopology after the natural sciences.

Photo of E. E. Evans-Pritchard

6. E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902 - 1973)

With an HPI of 58.88, E. E. Evans-Pritchard is the 6th most famous British Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 32 different languages.

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard FBA FRAI (21 September 1902 – 11 September 1973) was an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology. He was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford from 1946 to 1970.

Photo of Mary Leakey

7. Mary Leakey (1913 - 1996)

With an HPI of 57.56, Mary Leakey is the 7th most famous British Anthropologist.  Her biography has been translated into 45 different languages.

Mary Douglas Leakey, FBA (née Nicol, 6 February 1913 – 9 December 1996) was a British paleoanthropologist who discovered the first fossilised Proconsul skull, an extinct ape which is now believed to be ancestral to humans. She also discovered the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, eastern Africa. For much of her career she worked with her husband, Louis Leakey, at Olduvai Gorge, where they uncovered fossils of ancient hominines and the earliest hominins, as well as the stone tools produced by the latter group. Mary Leakey developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai. She discovered the Laetoli footprints, and at the Laetoli site she discovered hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old. During her career, Leakey discovered fifteen new species of animal. She also brought about the naming of a new genus. In 1972, after the death of her husband, Leakey became director of excavations at Olduvai. She maintained the Leakey family tradition of palaeoanthropology by training her son, Richard, in the field.

Photo of Victor Turner

8. Victor Turner (1920 - 1983)

With an HPI of 57.25, Victor Turner is the 8th most famous British Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Victor Witter Turner (28 May 1920 – 18 December 1983) was a British cultural anthropologist best known for his work on symbols, rituals, and rites of passage. His work, along with that of Clifford Geertz and others, is often referred to as symbolic and interpretive anthropology.

Photo of Edmund Leach

9. Edmund Leach (1910 - 1989)

With an HPI of 49.71, Edmund Leach is the 9th most famous British Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.

Sir Edmund Ronald Leach FRAI FBA (7 November 1910 – 6 January 1989) was a British social anthropologist and academic. He served as provost of King's College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979. He was also president of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 1971 to 1975.

Photo of Jack Goody

10. Jack Goody (1919 - 2015)

With an HPI of 49.18, Jack Goody is the 10th most famous British Anthropologist.  His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Sir John Rankine Goody (27 July 1919 – 16 July 2015) was an English social anthropologist. He was a prominent lecturer at Cambridge University, and was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 to 1984. Among his main publications were Death, property and the ancestors (1962), Technology, Tradition, and the State in Africa (1971), The myth of the Bagre (1972) and The domestication of the savage mind (1977).

People

Pantheon has 16 people classified as British anthropologists born between 1808 and 1973. Of these 16, 4 (25.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living British anthropologists include Jane Goodall, Marilyn Strathern, and Chris Stringer. The most famous deceased British anthropologists include James George Frazer, Edward Burnett Tylor, and Gregory Bateson. As of April 2024, 4 new British anthropologists have been added to Pantheon including Jack Goody, Marilyn Strathern, and W. H. R. Rivers.

Living British Anthropologists

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Deceased British Anthropologists

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Newly Added British Anthropologists (2024)

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Overlapping Lives

Which Anthropologists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 12 most globally memorable Anthropologists since 1700.