Freedman , Maurice , 1920-1975 , anthropologist

Professor Maurice Freedman, 1920-1975, was educated at Hackney Downs school and took a shortened two year degree in English at Kings College London in order to enter the army. He served in the Royal Artillery from 1941 to 1945, three years of which were spent in India. In 1946, he entered the Anthropology Department of the London School of Economics, where he became interested in social anthropology. His main interest was the study of Chinese society, a subject on which he produced many works, spending two years from 1949 to 1950 in field research among the Hokkien speaking Chinese of Singapore. In 1950 he was made a lecturer, in 1957 a reader, and in 1965 a professor. In 1970 he left LSE to take over the chair of social anthropology at Oxford on the retirement of Sir Edward Evans Pritchard. Freedman's interest in Asia prompted him to become first organising secretary and them chairman of the London Committee of the London-Cornell Project for research in south and south-east Asia. He was also greatly interested in Jewish culture and ideas, becoming the managing editor of the Jewish Journal of Sociology, which was founded to provide a forum for serious writing on Jewish affairs.