Abstract
W. J. PERRY'S interest in anthropology developed while he was reading mathematics at Cambridge and had the good fortune to come into close contact with W.H.R. Rivers,when the latter was concerned with external source of ritual and other cultural features in Melanesia and was interested in Elliot Smith's studies of archaic ritual in Egypt. Perry took up the whole question of evidence for the survival of elments of ancient Egyptian cults, beliefs and institutions in other parts of the world. For a while this was a leisure occupation, but on his invitation to join Elliot Smith at Manchester as reader in comparative religion, he was able to devote himself entirely to these questions, learning Dutch in order to make a detailed study of the Indonesian material, which he published in his first major work, "The Megalithic Culture of Indonesia" (Manchester, 1918).
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FORDE, D. Dr. W. J. Perry. Nature 163, 865–866 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163865b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163865b0