Malcolm Adiseshiah
From 1 to 16 November 1945 a United Nations Conference was convened in London for the establishment of an educational and cultural organization (ECO/CONF). In the conference, a new organization was created to establish the “intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind” and thus prevent the outbreak of another world war. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded by thirty-seven countries. Its Constitution to promote collaboration between member states in the fields of education, science and culture was signed on 16 November 1945 and came into force on 4 November 1946. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President of India, was a former student of Adiseshiah’s father. He made a referral to Sir Julian Huxley, then Director-General of UNESCO, who invited Adiseshiah to the organization in 1948. He was posted as Deputy Director of the department of exchange of persons. In that capacity Adiseshiah signed the UNESCO Fellowship letter in 1949 to M. S. Swaminathan, eminent scientist and administrator, to pursue research at the Agricultural University in Wageningen, the Netherlands which was the starting point of his illustrious career.
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences
The International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) is the largest world forum of anthropologists and ethnologists, with members from more than fifty countries. Every five years, in different parts of the world, the IUAES sponsors a major Congress (ICAES/World Congress), gathering researchers from all of the various subfields and branches of anthropology. The IUAES was founded under the auspices of UNESCO in 1948. The International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (ICAES) had been separately founded in London in 1934. The two organizations united in 1948, and merged officially in 1968. In 2018, IUAES became one of the chambers of the newly established World Anthropological Union (WAU). The main objective of the IUAES is the internationalization of anthropology, and the cross-cultural honing and public dissemination of anthropological research perspectives.