SAI is sad to share the news that Professor Stanley J. Tambiah, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, passed away on January 19 after a long illness.
He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University (1954). Having served as a UNESCO technical assistance expert in Thailand from 1960 to 1963, he joined the faculty at the University of Cambridge, where he taught for ten years, and was a Fellow of King’s College. He went to the University of Chicago in 1973 as a tenured professor, and joined Harvard University in 1976.
Tambiah began his field work in Sri Lanka (1956-59), the island of his birth, and since 1960 has concentrated on Thailand, about which country he has written three monographs. Since 1983, he has revived his interest in Sri Lanka, whose disastrous ethnic conflict has engaged him. He wrote numerous books about South Asia, Thailand and Sri Lanka.