Froelich G. Rainey

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Froelich Gladstone Rainey (born June 18, 1907 in Black River Falls , Wisconsin , † October 11, 1992 in St Austell , Cornwall ) was an American anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology .

Life

Rainey grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana . He attended the University of Chicago ( Bachelor in English Literature 1927) and the American School in France and initially wanted to be a novelist.

In 1929 Rainey took the ship to China to visit Inner Mongolia . Due to the onset of the global economic crisis , he found himself penniless and had to make ends meet as a sailor, later as an English teacher on the Philippines island of Luzon . He later did fieldwork for the Peabody Museum of Natural History in Puerto Rico , where he identified the crab culture and the conch culture , and obtained a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1935. acquire. In 1936 he became Otto Geist's assistant in his work on the islands of the Bering Sea and took a position at the University of Alaska Fairbanks .

Together with Helge Larsen , Rainey undertook an expedition to Point Hope in 1939 , where they carried out important research with J. Louis Giddings on the prehistoric and contemporary culture of the Ipiutak ( Iñupiat ). During the Second World War Rainey served, among other things, on a mission in Ecuador that was supposed to ensure the supply of the armed forces with the malaria drug quinine . From 1944 he worked in the diplomatic service. In occupied Germany he campaigned for reconstruction aid, which resulted in the Marshall Plan .

From 1947 Rainey led the Penn Museum , the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania ( University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology ), but was temporarily also a precursor organization of the Central Intelligence Agency operates, among other things, to spies to Afghanistan smugglers disguised as archaeologists. He also held a professorship in archeology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Rainey was considered very successful in soliciting donations for his museum and for other museums as well as for the Museum Applied Science Center for Archeology (MASCA), a research facility for the investigation of finds during excavations. At MASCA, among other things, aerial archeology , the radiocarbon method and thermoluminescence dating were further developed. He himself led excavations in Tikal ( Guatemala ) and Sybaris ( Italy ), among others .

Froelich Rainey is known as the host of the television show What in the World , in which scientists were asked to consider the purpose, origin and age of certain museum pieces. The show ran for 15 years from 1949 on American television (including WCAU ) and received the Peabody Award , among other things . In the late 1950s, Rainey was president of the International Congress of the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences , and in the early 1960s director of the American Association of Museums . In 1971 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

In 1977 Rainey retired as museum director and chose his retirement home in Cornwall . Froelich Rainey was married twice. His first divorced marriage to Penelope Lewis had two daughters, one of whom died early. His second wife, Marina Cippico, survived him.

literature

  • Howard C. Peterson: Froelich Gladstone Rainey . In: Penn Museum (ed.): Expedition Magazine . tape 18 , no. 4 , 1976 ( penn.museum ).
  • Rose Simmons: F. Rainey, 85 . In: The Philadelphia Inquirer . October 13, 1992 ( alaska.edu ).
  • Froelich Rainey, 85, A Museum Director And an Archeologist . In: The New York Times . October 14, 1992 ( nytimes.com ).
  • John Irving: Obituary: Froelich Rainey . In: The Independent . October 15, 1992 ( independent.co.uk ).
  • John Bockstoce: Froelich Gladstone Rainey . In: Arctic . tape 46 , no. 1 , March 1993, p. 88–89 ( ucalgary.ca [PDF; 549 kB ]).
  • Reniel Rodríguez Ramos: Froelich Rainey . In: Enciclopedia de Puerto Rico . April 12, 2012 ( enciclopediapr.org ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter R. (PDF; 508 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved May 10, 2020 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Rainey, Froelich G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rainey, Froelich Gladstone; Rainey, Froelich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist and archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Black River Falls , Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1992
Place of death St Austell , Cornwall