He was born on June 12, 1883 to an Austrian mother and Hungarian father in Vienna. He lived there until he was ten years old then moved to New York City. In New York he surrounded himself with German friends and family and even continued to speak Viennese at home. For the rest of his life he felt like a member of both American and German-Austrian cultures. He studied Latin, Greek, philosophy, and science at the City College of New York until he graduated in 1901. Then he worked as a teacher in New York City public schools for three years. In 1904 he started to go to Columbia University for graduate school and it was there that he met Franz Boas, a famous anthropologist. Boas became Lowie's teacher and role model. Lowie liked Boas because of their shared German background and similar interest in details rather than abstractions about human cultures. As a student of Boas, Lowie was tasked with writing a thesis about the Native American Crow tribe, which is what ended up sparking his interest in other tribes. He graduated from Columbia with his Ph.D in 1908 and worked at the Natural History Museum in New York City from then until 1921. He enjoyed researching and writing, so he continued to do those things throughout his life. He did extensive ethnographic field work during this time and studied more than nine Native American tribes throughout his lifetime. He was a teacher at UC Berkeley from 1921 to 1950.