Elman Service was born on May 18, in Tecumseh Michigan and died on November 14, 1996. He was married to Helen S Service. He was a cultural anthropologist. Service earned an Bachelors Degree at the University of Michigan in 1941. While attending the University of Michigan, he interrupted his studies to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight fascism in Spain. This experience was one of the reasons he became interested in anthropology. Service also fought in WWII for the US Army. In 1951, he earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University. He taught at Columbia from 1949-1953, the University of Michigan from 1953-68 and the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1968 until his retirement in 1985. Although he was retired, he remained involved in the anthropology department at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Service did research on Latin American Indian ethnology, cultural evolution, and theory and method in ethnology. He conducted field research in Paraguay, Mexico and on the Havasupai of the Grand Canyon. He was a member of the American Ethnological Society and the American Anthropological Association.
Books by Elman Service are:
Anthropology News Death http://www.aaanet.org/press/an/info/gddeath.htm
American Men and Women of Science. 13th edition. Edited by Jacques Cattell Press. R. R. bowker Company. New York & London. 1976.
Who's Who in America, 42nd edition. Marquis Who's Who. Chicago. 1982.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elman_Service
Written by students in an Introduction to Anthropology course at MSU-Mankato