Edward B. Tylor

Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) was an English anthropologist, often called the founder of the discipline in Britain. The son of a Quaker brass founder, he left business for travel after a bout of ill health, met the archaeologist Henry Christy in Cuba and accompanied him to Mexico, and published his first book, Anahuac, in 1861. Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865) and Primitive Culture (1871) set out his method of comparing customs across the world and his theory of animism as the earliest form of religion. He became keeper of the Oxford University Museum, the university's first professor of anthropology in 1896, and was knighted in 1912.