Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941), a Scottish classicist and anthropologist, was the author of The Golden Bough, a classic study of magic and religion. It popularized anthropology.

James Frazer was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on Jan. 1, 1854. He attended Glasgow University (1869-1874), where his major interest was the classics. He continued his studies in classics at Trinity College at Cambridge and was elected a fellow of the college in 1879. He remained at Cambridge the rest of his life, except for an appointment as professor of social anthropology at Liverpool University in 1907, which he resigned after a year.

Frazer continued his interest in classics, editing Sallust's Catilina et lugurtha (1884), translating Pausanias's Description of Greece (1898), and editing and translating Ovid's Fasti (1929).

Frazer's early classical interests were considerably broadened through acquaintance with Sir Edward Tylor's Primitive Culture. Frazer decided that ancient rituals and myths could be illuminated by examination of similar customs...