TAX, SOL

born Oct. 30, 1907, Chicago, Ill., U.S. died Jan. 4, 1995, Chicago American cultural anthropologist who founded the journal Current Anthropology. He was also known for the Fox Project, a study of the culture of the Fox and Sauk Indians. Tax received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1935), where he was a professor from 1944 until his retirement. He pioneered the use of transactional analysis in his study of the Omaha kinship pattern among the Fox. During his work with the Fox (Mesquakie) Indians from 1948 to 1962, he became convinced that the influence of the anthropologist's presence among them deserved not only to be further studied but to be directed toward the benefit of the native peoples. His work led him to champion what he called active anthropology, to work to develop a pan-Indian organization, and to help native American tribes to preserve their cultural identity. Throughout his career Tax participated in numerous anthropological societies. In 1959 he served as president of the American Anthropology Association. Tax was founder and general editor of Current Anthropology: A World Journal of the Sciences of Man from 1960 to 1974, and he helped coordinate and served as chairman of the National Anthropology Film Center. Among the publications that he edited are Heritage of Conquest: The Ethnology of Middle America (1952), An Appraisal of Anthropology Today (1953), Evolution after Darwin, 3 vol. (1960), Anthropology TodaySelections (1962), and Horizons of Anthropology (1964).