McGovern, William Montgomery, 1897-1964

Far Eastern and Latin American specialist; professor of Political Science, Northwestern University, 1929-1964. McGovern led a colorful life; he received the degree of soro, or doctor of divinity, from a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, Japan, studied at the Sorbonne and the University of Berlin, and received his D.Phil. from Christ Church College, Oxford. His appointments as lecturer examiner in Oriental Studies at the University of London were interrupted by expeditions to Tibet in 1922-23and through the upper Amazon basin and Peru in 1925-26. The former trip was recounted in McGovern's popular book, To Lhasa in Disguise. In 1927 he became Assistant Curator of the Anthropology Department at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, and in 1929 began his teaching career in Political Science at Northwestern, where he remained until his death in 1964.

From the description of William McGovern Papers, 1916-1967. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 82369018