Claude Levi-Strauss (Brussels, 28 November 1908 - Paris, 30 October 2009) was educated in law and philosophy at the Sorbonne. After World War II, he moved to the USA where he taught at the New School for Social Research in New York. The book The Elementary Structures of Kinship was one of his first works in 1949, being instantly recognized as one of the most important of anthropology. In 1955 he published the famous topic Sad, based on his ethnographic experience in Brazil between 1935 and 1939.
It was Doctor Honoris Causa at the universities of Brussels, Oxford, Chicago, Stirling, Upsal, Montreal, National Autonomous University of Mexico, National University of Congo, University of Visva Bhrati (India) and Yale , Harvard, John Hopkins and Columbia.
He received numerous awards, including: the Viking Fund of the Association of ethnologists in 1967, the gold medal of the CNRS in 1973 and the Erasmus Prize in 1986 was part of the French Academy since 1973.
Paidós Editions has published some of the most important works of French anthropologist, including Tristes topics. Levi-Strauss has definitely been one of the key thinkers of the twentieth century.