Lowe (born in Harrisburg, Arkansas) got his BA from Hendrix College and his PhD in organic chemistry from Duke University on synthesis of natural products, before spending time in Germany on a Humboldt Fellowship.
Lowe was one of the first people to blog from inside the pharmaceutical industry, with the approval of his supervisor and the company legal department, and one of the first science bloggers. By 2006, his blog had between 3,000 and 4,000 visitors per day during the workweek; he covered business matters, trends and issues in medicinal chemistry, and legal matters like patent law and regulation. At that time he was working at a pharmaceutical company doing hit to lead medical chemistry work.  his blog received between 15,000 and 20,000 page views on a typical weekday.  His response to a 2013 article in BuzzFeed that propagated chemophobia was widely cited.
He serves on the editorial board of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters and on the advisory board of Chemical & Engineering News.
 he was working at Novartis; formerly he had worked for 10 years at Vertex, 9 years at Bayer, and 8 years at Schering-Plough.