The Richard Frucht Memorial Lecture Series was created by the University of Alberta's Department of Anthropology in honour of the late Dr. Richard Frucht. Dr. Frucht came to the University of Alberta in 1966, and at the time of his death in 1979 he was a full professor with the Department of Anthropology. His courses were extremely popular, and he was well liked because of his lecturing style and
friendly nature to his colleagues. In honour and memory of Dr. Frucht, the Department instituted a graduate studies development fund that permits an annual anthropology speaker series. This fund allows the Association of Graduate Anthropology Students (AGAS) to bring in a keynote speaker to present on their research, theory, or other topics of interest to the Department and its students. In the spirit of Dr. Frucht's academic exploration of the links between local level societies and economies with worldwide historical processes, which reflected the four-field nature of the Department, the speaker is chosen to present on a topic that reflects one of the four sub-fields of anthropology: cultural, biological, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology.
