French thinker - anthropologist - humanist Levi-Strauss dead at 100

[The Straight Story]

French thinker Levi-Strauss dead at 100

French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who helped shape Western thinking about human civilisation, has died at the age of 100, his publisher and colleagues said on Tuesday.

Levi-Strauss died on Friday and was buried at a private service in the Burgundy village of Lignerolles, where had a house, senior colleagues said.

"Two years ago he broke his hip and he had been very tired ever since. He died at a grand old age," said Philippe Desacola, his successor as head of the social anthropology laboratory at the College of France research institute.

Trained as a philosopher, Levi-Strauss shot to prominence with his 1955 book Tristes Tropiques (A World on the Wane), a haunting account of travels and studies in the Amazon basin and one of the 20th century's major works.

Paying tribute, President Nicolas Sarkozy gave "homage to a tireless humanist, a curious academic who was always in search of new knowledge, to a man free of any sectarianism or indoctrination."

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/french-thinker-levistrauss-dead-at-100-20091104-hvo5.html