Lowie, Robert

Lowie, Robert (Harry)

(1883–1957) cultural anthropologist; born in Vienna, Austria. The son of a merchant who brought his family to America in 1893, he graduated from the City University of New York (1901), taught in the public schools, and took a Ph.D. at Columbia University under Franz Boas (1908). From 1907–21 he was on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He taught at the University of California: Berkeley from 1921–50. His research interests involved North American Indian societies, particularly the Crow. His most influential general works were Primitive Society (1920), Primitive Religion (1924), and Social Organization (1948). In later years he also applied his ethnological approach to studies of Germany in such works as Toward Understanding Germany (1954).