Born Rodney Phillip Needham Green, he changed his name in 1947; the following year he married Maud Claudia (Ruth) Brysz.
[1][2] The couple would collaborate on several works, including an English translation of Robert Hertz's Death and the Right Hand.
[1][2] Together with Edmund Leach and Mary Douglas, Needham brought structuralism from France and anglicised it in the process.
A prolific scholar, he was also a teacher and a rediscoverer of neglected figures in the history of his discipline, such as Arnold Van Gennep and Robert Hertz.
Among other things, he contributed to the study of family resemblance, introducing the terms "monothetic" and "polythetic" into anthropology.