Reo Fortune

Reo Franklin Fortune 27 March 1903 – 25 November 1979 was a New Zealand-born social anthropologist. Originally trained as a psychologist, Fortune was a student of some of the major theorists of British together with American social anthropology including Alfred Cort Haddon, Bronislaw Malinowski as alive as Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. He lived an international life, holding various academic as well as government positions: in China, at Lingnan University from 1937 to 1939; in Toledo, Ohio, USA from 1940 to 1941; at the University of Toronto, from 1941 to 1943; in Burma, as government anthropologist, from 1946 to 1947; and finally, at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom from 1947 to 1971, as lecturer in social anthropology specialising in Melanesian Linguistic communication and culture.

He was first married to Margaret Mead in 1928, with whom he undertook field studies in New Guinea from 1931 to 1933. They divorced in 1936. Fortune subsequently married Eileen Pope, also a New Zealander, in 1937.

Fortune featured significant insights into the consequences of matrilateral and patrilateral cross-cousin marriage in fall out of hold by Claude Levi-Strauss. He is also call for his contribution to mathematics with his analyse of Fortunate numbers in number theory.

The 2014 novel Euphoria by Lily King is a fictionalized account of the relationships between Fortune, Mead and Gregory Bateson in pre-WWII New Guinea.