David Maybury-Lewis was born in Hyderabad, Pakistan in 1929. Marbury-Lewis received his Bachelors of Arts from Oxford University in 1952. Four years later he earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Oxford University. David Maybury-Lewis emigrated to the Unites States in 1960 to join the Harvard University staff as a cultural anthropologist. While at Harvard he met and married his wife Pia, who in 1972 helped him to establish Cultural Survival Inc., a private company aimed to protect historical and cultural sites around the world.
In 1992, public television ran his 10 part series, "Millennium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World". Maybury-Lewis served as the host for the series, which dealt with a comparative study of different cultures from around the world. Maybury-Lewis has also authored several books including Dialectical Societies: The Ge and Bororo of Central Brazil and The Attraction of Opposites: Thought and Society in the Dualistic Mode.
Through his work with Cultural Survival Inc., Maybury-Lewis has chronicled the lives of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially Brazil. Because of his contributions to Brazilian social science, Maybury-Lewis was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Scientific Merit in 1997, Brazil’s highest academic award. In the spring of 1998 David Maybury-Lewis was awarded the Anders Retzuis gold medal of the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography by the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf Folke Hubertus. David Maybury-Lewis continues to teach cultural anthropology at Harvard University and his interests include cultural survival of tribal people and ethnic minorities.
Biography.com. http://www.biography.com/search/article.do?id=9403654 . 22 June. 2,000.
NewsMarkers The Harvard University Gazette (4 June1998) http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/06.04/news.html 22 June 2,000
NewsMarkers The Harvard University Gazette (6 Feb 1997)
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/02.06/news.html 22 June 2,000
Written by Timothy Hoehn
Edited by Marcy L. Voelker, 2007