Abstract
THE death is reported of Dr. Berthold Laufer, of the Anthropological Department of the Field Museum, Chicago, and one of the foremost authorities on the art and antiquities of China. Berthold Laufer was born in Cologne on October 11, 1874, and was educated at the University of Berlin and at Leipzig, where he took his Ph.D. in 1897. In 1898-99 he travelled in Siberia as a member of the Jesup Expedi tion to the North Pacific and in 1901-4 was in China with the expedition of the Eastern Asiatic Committee. In 1904 he joined the staff of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, where he remained until 1908, acting, from 1905 until 1907, as a lecturer in anthropology at Columbia University. After spending the two years 1908-10 in Tibet and China with the Blackstone expedition, he was appointed in 1911 a curator in the Anthropological Department of the Field Museum, Chicago, a position which he retained until his death. He continued to travel in China at intervals during this, the most fruitful period of his life, and the collections of the Field Museum benefited enormously not only from his success as a collector of objects of ancient Chinese art, but also from his unrivalled knowledge of Chinese antiquities.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dr. Berthold Laufer. Nature 134, 562 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134562a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134562a0