author
Robert F. (Robert Francis) Murphy
1924–1990
An anthropologist who paired close, field-based research with vivid writing, he is especially remembered for work on Indigenous communities in the Amazon and for a powerful memoir about living with paralysis.
1 Audiobook
Shoshone-Bannock Subsistence and Society
by Robert F. (Robert Francis) Murphy, Yolanda Murphy
About the author
Born in 1924, he became an American anthropologist and taught for many years at Columbia University. His fieldwork included research among the Munduruku of the Amazon and the Tuareg of the Sahara, and those experiences shaped several of his best-known books.
He wrote with both scholarly depth and unusual clarity for general readers. Along with Yolanda Murphy, he co-authored Women of the Forest, and he later reached a wide audience with The Body Silent, a personal account of becoming paralyzed and reflecting on disability, identity, and social life.
He died in 1990. His work is still noted for bringing together careful anthropology, humane observation, and an ability to connect large social questions with lived experience.