Robert F. Murphy (anthropologist)
anthropologist (1924–1990)
Robert Francis Murphy (March 3, 1924 – October 8, 1990) was an American anthropologist and professor of anthropology at Columbia University in New York City, from the early 1960s to 1990. His field work included studies of the Munduruku (Mundurucu) people of the Amazon and the Tuareg people of the Sahara.
Family, education, career
Murphy, a Far Rockaway, Queens native, was a third-generation descendant of Irish immigrants. Raised in a "lace-curtain Irish" neighborhood, his mother, battling breast cancer, raised him and his four siblings single-handedly, while their father was largely absent. His mother died when Bob was 14.
He enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II, serving as a private. He used the G.I. Bill to attend Columbia College as an undergraduate, graduating in 1949. Murphy went on to earn his Master of Arts and PhD in anthropology at Columbia University. He met his wife Yolanda in a physical anthropology course in graduate school, and they were married in St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Robert F. Murphy (anthropologist)” is anthropologist (1924–1990). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Robert, Murphy and anthropologist, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7344210. VIAF identifies the subject as 109002721. The Library of Congress control number is n50034255. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 1990 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert F. Murphy (anthropologist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.