Kaj Birket-Smith

The anthropologist Frederica de Laguna during a symposium in 1937 together with Kaj Birket-Smith (right)

Kaj Birket-Smith (born January 20, 1893 in Copenhagen , † October 28, 1977 in Liselund, Vodskov near Aalborg ) was a Danish geographer and ethnologist .

Life

Birket-Smith worked primarily as an ethnologist and was a specialist in the Inuit and Eyak cultures. In 1921 he took part in Knud Rasmussen's Fifth Thule Expedition . In 1940 he became director of the ethnographic department of the Danish National Museum , where he had worked since 1929. He studied the spread of reindeer herding culture .

Honors

Birket-Smith won the Hans Egede Medal from the Geographical Society of Denmark, the Huxley Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Loubat Prize . He belonged to numerous academies and scientific societies, including the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences , the Norwegian Academy of Sciences , the Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Academies , the Finnish Academy of Sciences and the Kungliga Vetenskaps- och Vitterhetssamhället i Göteborg . The University of Basel , the University of Uppsala and the University of Pennsylvania awarded him an honorary doctorate . He was a knight (1939) and commander (1963) of the Danebrog Order .

Web links

• Kaj Birket-Smith in Dansk biografisk leksikon (Danish)
• Literature by and about Kaj Birket-Smith in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Kaj Birket-Smith in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Literature by and about Kaj Birket-Smith in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)

Remarks

1. ↑ See for example Kaj Birket-Smith: History of Culture. A general ethnology. 3. Edition. Zurich 1956.
2. ^ Henry B. Collins, Jr .: Anthropology during the War. II. Scandinavia . In: Blackwell Publishing (Ed.): American Anthropologist . New Series, Vol. 48, No. 1, January-March 1946, pp. 141-144. JSTOR 662818 . , ISSN  0002-7294
3. ↑ Named after Joseph Florimond Loubat .