Lowie, Robert Harry

Related Category: Anthropology: Biographies

or Robert Heinrich Lowie(lō´ē), 1883–1957, American anthropologist, b. Vienna, grad. College of the City of New York, 1901, Ph.D. Columbia, 1908. He was on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History from 1908 until 1921. From that year until his death he taught at the Univ. of California. Lowie gained international fame through his studies of the Native North American, especially the northern Plains tribes, and his contributions to ethnological theory. His book, Primitive Society (1920, 2d ed. 1947), and its sequel, Social Organization (1948), are regarded as classics in their field. Other writings include Primitive Religion (1924, rev. ed. 1948), An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (1934, rev. ed. 1940), The History of Ethnological Theory (1938), and Indians of the Plains (1954). His autobiography was published in 1959; the Crow Texts translated and edited by him and Selected Papers in Anthropology appeared in 1960.

See biography by R. F. Murphy (1972).