Claude Levi-Strauss

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908, Brussels – 2009, Paris) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology.
Lévi-Strauss studied law and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982. He was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973. and received numerous honors from universities and institutions throughout the world. He has been called, alongside James George Frazer and Franz Boas, the "father of modern anthropology". Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere. These observations culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques that established his position as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into many fields in the humanities, including philosophy. He has defined structuralism as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity." 
Some of his most aclaimed works are Tristes Tropiques (1955), Anthropologie structurale (1958), La Pensée sauvage (1962), L’Anthropologie face aux problèmes du monde moderne (2011),  Nous sommes tous des cannibales (2013).

Image source: Wikipedia/UNESCO_Michel Ravassard