Edward B. (Edward Burnett) Tylor

Born in London in 1832, Edward Burnett Tylor came from a Quaker family and first worked in the family business before illness led him to travel. Those travels, especially in the Americas, pushed him toward the study of human societies and beliefs.

Tylor is widely regarded as one of the founders of cultural anthropology. His best-known books, Primitive Culture (1871) and Anthropology (1881), argued that culture could be studied systematically and compared across societies. He is also closely associated with the concept of animism in the study of religion.

Later in life, he became an important academic figure at the University of Oxford, where he served as a professor and helped establish anthropology as a recognized discipline. Although many of his nineteenth-century evolutionary ideas are now debated or outdated, his influence on the early development of anthropology remains substantial.