Claude Lévi-Strauss

Claude Lévi-Strauss (28th November 1908 - 30th October 2009) was a French anthropologist who applied the theory of structuralism to the study of human culture and society as structural anthropology. This involves study on the relationships between members of a family, rather than those family units themselves, as discussed in his 1968 work Structural Anthropology, volumes 1 and 2.

Lévi-Strauss studied at the University of Paris and made expeditions to central Brazil while working at the University of São Paolo. In France he was Director of Studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes from 1950 and the Chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France. He was also made a member of the official authority on the French language, the Académie française.