Berthold Laufer (October 11, 1874 – September 13, 1934) was a German anthropologist and historical geographer with an expertise in East Asian languages. The American Museum of Natural History calls him "one of the most distinguished sinologists of his generation".

Life

Laufer was born in Cologne in Germany to Max and Eugenie Laufer (née Schlesinger). His paternal grandparents Salomon and Johanna Laufer were adherents of the Jewish faith. Laufer had a brother Heinrich (died 10 July 1935) who worked as a physician in Cairo. Laufer attended the Friedrich Wilhelms Gymnasium from 1884 to 1893. He continued his studies in Berlin (1893–1895), and completed his doctorate in oriental languages at the University of Leipzig in 1897. The following year he emigrated to the United States where he remained until his death. He carried out ethnographic fieldwork on the Amur River and Sakhalin Island during 1898-1899 as part of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. He was fluent in more than ten non Indo-European languages. The Division of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History webpage on Laufer China Expedition (1901-1904) states that he: He worked as assistant in Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History (1904–1906), became a lecturer in Anthropology and East-Asiatic Languages at Columbia University (1905–1907). The rest of his career he spent at the Field Museum in Chicago. In 1930 Laufer was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his research. He served as the president of the History of Science Society in 1932. Laufer died on September 13, 1934, after falling from the 8th floor fire escape of the Chicago Beach Hotel in Chicago, where he lived. He had been recovering from the removal of a tumor at the time, but his widow claimed he was in good spirits, and the Coroner's jury returned an undetermined verdict. He bequeathed his personal library and correspondence, including more than 7,000 volumes in Chinese, to the Field Museum library. From "Lasting Impressions: Chinese Rubbings from the Field Museum" Brochure (The Field Museum of Chicago): In addition to his studies in Chinese culture as such, Laufer used his knowledge of ancient Chinese writings to shed light on ancient Iran. Very few writings have survived from ancient Iran. Surviving ancient Chinese writings contain valuable information about ancient Iran, which Laufer was the first to study systematically, and which he published as Sino-Iranica: Chinese contributions to the history of civilization in ancient Iran, with special reference to the history of cultivated plants and products (1919). In March 2020 the 385 wax cylinders Laufer recorded in Shanghai and Beijing in 1901 and 1902—comprising the earliest sound recordings of Chinese music—were made available to the public by the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music.link

List of works

Written in English

Written in French

Written in German

Collections