Lawrence Krader

Who was Lawrence Krader?

Lawrence Krader was an important American socialist anthropologist and ethnologist. At the Philosophy Department of the City College of New York from 1936 onwards he studied Aristotle with Abraham Edel, Leibniz with Philipp P. Wiener and mathematical logic and linguistics with Alfred Tarski. In 1937-38, he also studied logic with Rudolf Carnap and ethnology with Franz Boas. In 1941 Krader graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree at CCNY and was granted the Ketcham Award for philosophy.

As the USA entered World War II, Krader joined the merchant navy within the framework of the Lend-Lease Act, and via Archangelsk ended up in Leningrad, where he learnt Russian language. After the war, Krader returned to the USA and studied linguistics at Columbia University with Roman Jakobson and André Martinet. During this time, he developed an interpretation of human evolution which stimulated him to leave philosophy, and commence an intensive study of the nomadic peoples of Central Asia, becoming a fellow of the Far Eastern Institute at the University of Washington in Seattle.