Robert Lowie

Robert Harry Lowie (born Robert Heinrich Löwe; June 12, 1883 – September 21, 1957) was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on North American Indians, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology.

Biography

Lowie was born and spent the first ten years of his life in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, but came to the United States in 1893. He studied at the College of the City of New York, where in 1896 he met and became friends with Paul Radin and from where he acquired his BA in Classical Philology in 1901. After a short stint as a teacher, he began studying chemistry at Columbia University, but soon switched to anthropology under the tutelage of Franz Boas, Livingston Farrand and Clark Wissler. Influenced by Clark Wissler, Lowie began his first fieldwork on the Lemhi Reservation in Idaho in the Northern Shoshone in 1906. He graduated (Ph.D.) in 1908. In 1909, he became assistant curator to Clark Wissler at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. During his time there, Lowie became a specialist in American Indians, being active in field research, particularly in several excursions to the Great Plains. This work led in particular to his identification with the Crow Indians. In 1917, he became assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1925 until his retirement in 1950, he was professor of anthropology at Berkeley, where, along with Alfred Louis Kroeber, he was a central figure in anthropological scholarship.