Leach, Edmund Ronald

Edmund Ronald Leach was born on 7 November 1910 at Sidmouth. He attended Marlborough College, and won an Exhibition to Clare College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1929. He studied mathematics for the first year, then engineering, achieving a First in 1932.

After Cambridge, Leach worked initially as a commercial assistant for Butterfield and Swire in Shanghai, spending his holidays travelling around the country. He undertook anthropological field research in Botel Tobago, (Orchid Island, Taiwan) in 1938, before returning to England as a graduate student at the London School of Economics, where he studied under Malinowski. This was followed by further research in Kurdistan. From 1939-45 Leach was an army officer stationed in Burma, where he carried out more field work. He married Celia Joyce Buckmaster in 1940, and they had a daughter, Louisa.

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