James George Frazer

James George Frazer was a Scottish social anthropologist and folklorist, born in Glasgow in 1854 and a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, for most of his working life. He is best known for The Golden Bough, a comparative study of ancient cults, rites and myths and their parallels in early Christianity, first published in 1890 and expanded to twelve volumes by 1915. Frazer proposed a three-stage model of cultural development moving from magic through religion to science, and was among the first scholars to describe in detail the relationship between myths and rituals. His work influenced Sigmund Freud and inspired T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. He was knighted in 1914, and the Frazer Lectureship in Social Anthropology was established in his honor in 1921 at Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow and Liverpool. He died in Cambridge in 1941. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/