Dow, Sterling, 1903-1995

Sterling Dow was born on November 19, 1903 in Portland, Maine, son of Sterling Tucker Dow (a railroad executive) and Alice Gertrude Verrill Dow. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy then entered Harvard University where he received an AB in 1925, AM in 1928, and a Ph.D. in 1936. He spent 1925-1926 at Trinity College, Cambridge studying history, then returned to Harvard to work and study with historian W. S. Ferguson. In 1931 he married Elizabeth Sanderson Flagg Dow (1905-1990) and they lived from 1931 to 1936 in Athens where he was associated with the American School of Classical Studies. When they arrived in Athens, the American excavations were just getting under way in the Agora, the ancient center of public life. Dow, with the assistance of his wife, developed a superior technique for making portable copies (called "squeezes") of inscriptions and together they made an immense collection of both new and previously known texts.

In 1936 Sterling Dow returned to Harvard and became as an Instructor and continued on the faculty as a member of the Departments of the Classics and of History and after 1949 he held the position of the John E. Hudson Professor of Archaeology until his retirement in 1970. He served briefly as the Harvard University Archivist, was a founder of the American Research Center in Egypt, the organization of Teachers of Classics in New England, and the journal Archaeology . After his retirement from Harvard, Dow taught as a visiting professor of Greek civilization and history at Boston College until 1977. The Dows had two children, Sterling Dow, Jr. and Elizabeth Sterling (Mrs. Robert George Lown). Sterling Dow died on January 9, 1995.

From the guide to the Sterling Dow epigraphical squeeze collection, ca. 1931-1936., (Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University)