A great intellectual figure, Franoise Hritier succeeded Claude Lvi-Strauss as the Chair of Anthropology at the Collge de France in 1982. She was both an Africanist, author of magnificent works on the Samo population, the scientific progenitor of kinship studies, the creator of a theoretical base to feminist thought and an activist for many causes. This book follows the path of her life, which had a lasting impact on a generation of French anthropologists and continues to this day.