Rivet, Paul (1876-1958)

Paul Rivet (1876-1958) was a French military doctor by training who discovered his anthropological vocation while participating in a geodetic mission in Ecuador (1901-1906). Back in France, he began his reconversion and became the spearhead of French Americanism. From the 1920s onwards, he was the mainstay of the institutionalization of French ethnology. Professor of anthropology at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, he modernized (with Georges Henri Rivière) the Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro. He was the founder and director of the Musée de l’Homme in 1938. He established himself as an authority on South American Indian linguistics and became known for his controversial theory of the settlement of the American continent.

Keywords: Museum curator | Doctor | First half of the 20^th century