Bronislaw Malinowski Physicist-mathematician, anthropologist Date of Birth: 07.04.1884 Country: Poland

Biography of Bronislaw Malinowski

Bronislaw Malinowski was a Polish physicist-mathematician and anthropologist who made significant contributions to the field of anthropology. He was born on April 7, 1884, in Krakow, Poland. Malinowski obtained his doctoral degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Krakow in 1908.

However, his interests shifted towards anthropology, and he moved to England where he worked at the London School of Economics from 1910 to 1939. He became one of the pioneers of "functionalism" and is regarded as an English anthropologist of Polish descent.

In 1927, Malinowski was appointed as a professor of social anthropology. He lectured at Cornell University in 1933 and served as a visiting professor at Yale University from 1939 to 1942.

Malinowski conducted his field research primarily in Melanesia. He initially studied the Mailu people in 1914 and then focused on the Trobriand Islands from 1915 to 1918. The tiny communities of these islands gained worldwide recognition and became the subjects of his monographs, such as "Argonauts of the Western Pacific" (1922), "The Sexual Life of Savages in Northwest Melanesia" (1929), and "Coral Gardens and their Magic" (1935).

In 1934, Malinowski visited his students who were working in South Africa, Northern Rhodesia, Kenya, and Tanganyika. In 1940-1941, he conducted eight months of field research on trading systems among the Zapotecs, an indigenous people of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Malinowski, along with A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, opposed historical reconstructions and diffusionist explanations of cultural differences. Instead, he focused on analyzing the functions of each cultural element within the context of society as a whole.

Malinowski made significant contributions to the study of primitive economies, magic, myths, and language. In his work "The Father in Primitive Psychology" (1927), he applied some of Sigmund Freud's ideas to the study of matrilineal societies. His other publications include "Myth in Primitive Psychology" (1926), "A Scientific Theory of Culture" (1944), and "The Dynamics of Culture Change" (1945).

Bronislaw Malinowski passed away on May 16, 1942, in New Haven, Connecticut.