Name Origin

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Pitt-Rivers is an English surname adopted by later holders of the peerage Baron Rivers. Holders of the surname include:

The surname was adopted by the ethnologist and archaeologist Augustus Henry Lane-Fox (1827–1900) when he inherited from Horace in 1880. (He was Horace's second-cousin, via a different daughter of George Pitt, 2nd Baron). Augustus Pitt Rivers founded the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. His descendants include:

  • George Pitt-Rivers (1890–1966), anthropologist, grandson of Augustus
  • Rosalind Pitt-Rivers (1907–1990), physiologist, joint discoverer of the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine, second wife of the above
  • Michael Pitt-Rivers (1917–1999), George (1890–1966)'s son, who gained notoriety when put on trial charged with buggery
  • Julian Pitt-Rivers (1919–2001), anthropologist and ethnographer, the second son
  • (George) Anthony Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers (born 1932), third son, who married in 1964 Valerie, who was Lord Lieutenant of Dorset 2006–2014.