Antone Kimball Romney passed away at his home in Irvine, California on December 29, 2023, at the age of 98. Kim was a visionary academic and one of the founders of the field of cognitive anthropology. An esteemed educator, researcher, and collaborator, he was a cherished member of the University of California, Irvine community. In addition to his academic legacy, he was a kind, generous, and humble husband, father, and friend. He had a passion for life, ideas, and exploring the world around him.

Kim was born on August 15, 1925, in Rexburg, Idaho, to Antone Kimball Romney and Gretta Parkinson Romney. He had two younger sisters Barbara (Galler) and Anne (Brockbank). Kim grew up in Provo, Utah, in humble circumstances during the Great Depression, gaining a deep sense of humility and generosity.

Kim met his beloved wife and lifelong partner Afton Romaine Barber in 1943 at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was a young Navy cadet. They were married in Denver, Colorado, on June 30, 1945, just before the end of World War II. They were married for over 77 years and shared a wonderful life together raising five children and enjoying a lifetime of exploration and adventures – from their early years of marriage living with indigenous people and collaborating on research efforts to their world travels late into their 90s. They went on more than 50 cruises, visiting all seven continents and exploring interesting ports of call from Greenland to Antarctica and Indonesia to Odessa.

After getting married, Kim pursued his academic studies, receiving his bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University. Kim started his career in the late 1950s teaching anthropology at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and Harvard University. In 1969, Kim became the dean of the School of Social Sciences at the newly formed University of California, Irvine. Kim taught at UCI in various disciplines for nearly 30 years. During this time he published a prolific body of work and contributed greatly to the study and understanding of human culture and cognition.

Kim was a lifelong learner who was driven to evolve the field of anthropology through a multidisciplinary approach. Kim's early studies focused on indigenous cultures, including fieldwork with the Navajo in New Mexico, the Mixtecans in Juxtlahuaca, Mexico, and the Maya in the highlands of Guatemala. His early experiences developing qualitative ethnographies ignited a quest to bring increased rigor, objectivity, and precision to the field through new quantitative tools. He developed models to study the semantic structure of related cultural concepts as interpreted by the arrangement of terms relative to each other in a spatial model. His work in this area continues to be a classic in the field of kinship terminological studies. Later in his career, Kim was a co-developer of the cultural consensus theory, a research methodology aimed at discovering and measuring the culturally correct answers to a series of questions and estimating informants' knowledge of the particular shared cultural domain. Cultural consensus theory is still one of the most widely employed methodological tools used in the study of anthropology. Kim retired from teaching at UCI in 1995, but he continued researching and writing journal articles into his late eighties, producing some of the work of which he was most proud. Much of this research explored a completely new area of study involving the reflectance spectra of the Munsell color samples and modeling these color samples in three-dimensional Euclidean space. This work is a testament to his profound impact on a variety of fields of expertise.

Kim loved sharing ideas and was a leader of many multidisciplinary collaborations. Over his career, he worked with more than one hundred co-authors representing fields as varied as anthropology, psychology, mathematics, linguistics, economics, neuroscience, genetics, and others. He received numerous awards throughout his career. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, followed by induction into the National Academy of Sciences in 1995 with recognition of his role as a founder of the field of cognitive anthropology. In 2016, he received UCI's Outstanding Emeritus Award. As stated in the nomination for the Emeritus Award, Kim made substantial post-retirement academic contributions in a low-key, unpretentious fashion, but with deep passion and commitment.

Kim enjoyed spending time with his family and often brought together his children and their significant others for trips and cruises to celebrate key milestones up through their 75th wedding anniversary. Sailing was a major passion of his, and he accumulated a vast knowledge of the craft and of celestial navigation. He and his son completed a grueling sailing trip to the San Blas Islands and through the Panama Canal in 1974. He continued to be a model of grit and living life to the fullest as he aged. He went skydiving at age 72, walked to his office regularly into his 90s, and traveled to Mexico just 2 months before his death.

Above all else, Kim enjoyed meaningful conversation. He loved discussing ideas, books, and current events with friends and family. He was a mentor and an inspiration. He had a great sense of humor and an infectious laugh. He listened. He was compassionate. And he brought out the best in people. He greatly enjoyed his weekly meetings with friends and colleagues, including the Friday afternoon club at Islands Restaurant.

Kim was preceded in death by his wife Romaine and by his daughter Rebecca Anne McCauley (Chad). He is survived by his son Robert Kimball Romney (Lenore) and daughters Xochitl Patricia Conner (Frank), Katherine Romney Thorn (David Morrissette), and Lisa Gretta Romney. Kim also leaves behind six grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.

His wonderful humor, sparkling blue eyes, and knowing smile will be missed by all.

A memorial service will be held for Kim at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, February 16, 2024, at the University Club located at 801 East Peltason Drive, Irvine, California 92617. All are welcome to attend this tribute to Kim, our dear colleague, friend, parent, and grandparent.

For more information about Kim's life and career, please refer to the In Memoriam prepared by the University of California, Irvine.

Arrangements under the direction of Chapman Funeral Homes - Mary Harmon, owner. Toll free (855) 628-0447.

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Obituary notice for Chapman Funeral Homes. Please visit www.chapmanfunerals.com .

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