Summary from a career-related article from The Guardian

France was paying tribute to one of its greatest intellectuals, the social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who has died at the age of 100.

Lévi-Strauss was a structuralist thinker, who devoted his five-decade career to the study of the human species around the world, is credited with having revolutionised the study of anthropology for the 20th century.His structuralist method, in which he searched for the underlying patterns in outwardly diverse social rituals and mythology, led him to study the differences- and similarities- between western countries and American Indian and Amazonian tribes.

His career blossomed in the 1950s with the publication in 1955 of Tristes Tropiques, a book hailed by many as one of the greatest works of the century. In it, he predicted the eventual demise of the human race. His theories, espoused in a series of highly acclaimed publications including The Savage Mind and the four-part Mythologiques, led to him taking his place in the pantheon of France's great 20th century thinkers.

People like the foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said Lévi-Strauss stood out not only for his scholarly accomplishments but also for his "moral convictions". "[He] broke with an ethnocentric vision of history and humanity," Kouchner said. "At a time when we are trying to give meaning to globalisation, to build a fairer and more humane world, I would like Claude Lévi-Strauss's universal echo to resonate more strongly."

On the other hand, Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, perpetual secretary of the Académie Française, of which Lévi-Strauss was a member, praised his "extraordinary openness of spirit". "He was a thinker, a philosopher ... We will not find another like him," she told French radio.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/nov/03/claude-levi-strauss-dies