Claude Levi-Strauss was a highly influential 20th century French anthropologist who founded the structuralist school of anthropology. He applied structural analysis to family relations and belief systems, arguing they are made up of interconnected parts. After studying law and teaching sociology in Brazil, he became a professor of anthropology in France, writing extensively on structural theory and its application to myth, ritual and kinship.

1. One of the most influential French anthropologists of the 20th Century, he founded the structuralist school of anthropology in the 1950s Claude levi Strauss 1908-2009