Laufer, Berthold

Berthold Laufer, (born Oct. 11, 1874, Cologne—died Sept. 13, 1934, Chicago), U.S. scholar who, for 35 years, was virtually the only sinologist working in the United States.

Laufer took his doctorate at the University of Leipzig under men in the forefront of Far Eastern studies. He made four major expeditions to the Himalayas and was curator of Asiatic Ethnology and Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

His more than 150 monographs on a wide variety of attributes of Chinese and Tibetan culture are indispensable reference works, many of them on highly specialized aspects of primitive technology. His extensive knowledge of Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese antiquities resulted in his being commissioned to collect books, manuscripts, and artifacts, and he made major contributions to the collections of the Field Museum and the Newberry Library in Chicago. Among his purchases were several masterpieces, no other copies of which are known.