A. L. (Alfred Louis) Kroeber

Trained by Franz Boas at Columbia University, he earned a PhD in 1901 and became the first professor appointed to anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He also directed Berkeley’s Museum of Anthropology for many years, helping establish the university as a major center for the field.

His research interests were broad, but he became especially known for studies of Native American cultures, particularly in California, and for influential ideas about culture and cultural patterns. Over a long career, he published extensively and played a major role in shaping American anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century.

He is also often remembered in connection with Ishi, the Yahi man whose life became widely known through Kroeber’s circle and later through the writing of Kroeber’s wife, Theodora Kroeber. Alfred Louis Kroeber died in 1960, but his work remains part of the history of anthropology and its debates.