Abstract
THE Wellcome Gold Medal for research in anthropology for 1936 has been awarded by the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute to Dr. Charles Kings -ley Meek for an essay entitled ‘ ‘Law and Authority in a Nigerian Tribe”. In accordance with the terms of award laid down when the medal was instituted by the late Sir Henry Wellcome, the subject of research is the application of the science of anthropology to the problems of administration among backward peoples. Dr. Meek was formerly an officer of the Nigerian administrative service, and has for long been known as the foremost authority on the native tribes of NorthernNigeria. He is the author of a number of works in which the ethnography of the territory has received detailed treatment. The Council of the Institute has also awarded the Rivers Memorial Medal to Dr. Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard. This medal is awarded in recognition of recent meritorious field work. On this occasion, the Council has had before it the results of Dr. Evans-Pritchard's work in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and in Kenya since 1926. Dr. Evans-Pritchard, who was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, and studied anthropology at the London School of Economics, was appointed in 1926 by the Sudan Government to carry on the ethnographical survey of the tribes of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan which had been initiated by Prof. C. G. Seligman, and later for a time was professor of anthropology in the University of Cairo. He has also acted as honorary secretary of the Royal Anthropological Institute. From time to time, the earlier results of his researches have been published in Sudan Notes and Queries and in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute. His further studies have appeared recently in a work on witchcraft among the Azande, which has been pronounced by those most competent to judge to be one of the outstanding works of recent years in anthropology. Dr. Evans-Pritchard is now engaged in preparing a further work on the religion and social organization of the Azande.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Awards in Anthropology. Nature 139, 831 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139831a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139831a0