Father of anthropology dies aged 100

Claude Levi-Strauss, widely considered the father of modern anthropology for work that included theories about the similarities between tribal and industrial societies, has died aged 100.

The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing the concept of structuralism, which seeks the common patterns of behaviour and thought, especially myths, in a wide range of human societies. Defined as the search for underlying patterns in all forms of human activity, structuralism compared the formal relationships among elements in any given system.

During his six-decade career, Levi-Strauss wrote works hailed as literary and anthropological classics including Tristes Tropiques (1955) and The Savage Mind (1963).

Born on 28 November 1908, in Brussels, Lévi-Strauss was the son of French parents of Jewish origin. He studied in Paris and went on to teach in Brazil, where he also conducted much of his research.