Jack Goody

Sir John Rankine Goody, FBA (/ˈɡʊdi/; 27 July 1919 – 16 July 2015), known as Jack Goody, was a British social anthropologist. He was a prominent lecturer at Cambridge University, and was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 to 1984.

Among his main publications were Death, property and the ancestors (1962), Technology, Tradition, and the State in Africa (1971), The myth of the Bagre (1972) and The domestication of the savage mind (1977).

Born 27 July 1919, Goody grew up in Welwyn Garden City and St Albans, where he attended St Albans School. He went up to St John's College, Cambridge to study English Literature in 1938, where he met leftist intellectuals like Eric Hobsbawm.

Goody left university to fight in World War II. Following officer training, he was commissioned into the Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), British Army, on 23 March 1940 as a second lieutenant. Fighting in North Africa, he was captured by the Germans and spent three years in prisoner-of-war camps. At the end of the war he held the rank of lieutenant. Following his release, he returned to Cambridge to continue his studies.