Frank G. (Frank Gouldsmith) Speck

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 8, 1881, Frank G. Speck became one of the leading anthropologists associated with the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for many years and served as a professor of anthropology from 1925 until his death in 1950.

He is especially remembered for his extensive fieldwork with Indigenous communities, including nations in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. Rather than relying only on secondhand accounts, he spent long periods gathering language, oral tradition, social history, and material culture directly from the people he studied, helping preserve knowledge that might otherwise have been lost.

Speck died on February 6, 1950. Today he is often noted both for the breadth of his research and for the large archive of notes, photographs, and collections connected to his work, which continues to be useful to scholars and communities interested in Indigenous history and culture.