My friend Mike Schultz, who has died aged 64 after suffering a heart attack, was a social scientist working in policy application and evaluation in the field of international development. He had a particular interest in forest peoples, having lived with and studied a tribe in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the 1980s.

Mike was born in Surrey and grew up in the village of Stanton St John, near Oxford, the second of four children of June (nee Mattheson), a research scientist, and Donald Schultz, a professor of engineering. At Magdalen College school in Oxford, where he and I first met, Mike did well academically and was active in sports, music and drama. After his A-levels he had two gap years, much of which he spent travelling, then went to King’s College, Cambridge, to study social anthropology, graduating in 1980.