Siegfried Frederick Nadel

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Siegfried Frederick Nadel (24 April 1903–14 January 1956), known as Fred Nadel, was an Austrian-born British anthropologist, specialising in African ethnology.

Nadel was born in Vienna, the son of a lawyer. He started his education in music, studying at the Musik Akademie and the Musikhistorisches Institut in Vienna, but also developed interests in philosophy and psychology. He went on to study the latter with Karl Bühler at the Psychologisches Institut at the University of Vienna, and the form with Moritz Schlick. On 11 November 1925 graduated with a doctorate, his thesis being "Zur Psychologie des Konsonanzerlebens".

His career was at first in music; he published books on musical typology (1930) and the Italian composer Ferruccio Benvenuto Busoni, and spent a short time as Assistant Conductor at the Düsseldorf Opera House in 1925.

After studying the musicology of primitive peoples at the Phonogrammarchiv in Berlin, and African languages at the University of Berlin, in 1932 Nadel was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship, allowing him to do post-graduate training in anthropological African field research. Nadel studied at the London School of Economics, supervised by Bronisław Malinowski. He began his fieldwork in Nigeria in 1933, which ganed him a Ph.D. in anthropology from the LSE.

Nadel enlisted in the Sudan Defence Force in 1941, transferring later that year to the British Army; he was appointed Secretary of Native Affairs as well as the Deputy Chief Secretary, and held these positions till his discharge in 1944.

Nadel was elected to the first chair of anthropology at the Australian National University in 1950. He spent much time lecturing around the world on his experiences of war, and on his field research in Nigeria and Sudan. He died in Canberra.