R. R. (Robert Ranulph) Marett

Born in Jersey on June 13, 1866, Robert Ranulph Marett became a British ethnologist and social anthropologist whose work is closely linked with the early study of religion. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, and later spent much of his career there, where he taught and wrote on anthropology, ethics, and philosophy.

Marett is best remembered for challenging the idea that religion began only with fully formed animism. Instead, he argued for an earlier, more instinctive and emotional stage of religious life, sometimes described as "pre-animistic" religion. That interest in ritual, belief, and the origins of culture made him an important figure in the British evolutionary school of anthropology.

He wrote several influential books, including The Threshold of Religion and Anthropology. Marett died on February 18, 1943. Although some of the theories of his era are now dated, his work remains part of the history of anthropology because of the way it pushed scholars to think more carefully about religion, feeling, and social custom.