---
title: "A.L. Kroeber"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Alfred L. Kroeber"
aliases: ["A. L. Kroeber","Alfred Louis Kroeber","Dr. A. L. Kroeber"]
first_seen: "2026-10-17T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["multiple discovery","Ogburn & Thomas (1922)","the Superorganic (1917)","cultural anthropology","priority disputes"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


American cultural anthropologist (1876–1960), a founding figure of the discipline at UC Berkeley, best known for his 1917 *American Anthropologist* essay "The Superorganic." Matters to this vault as the earliest-documented node in its multiple-discovery genealogy: [[entity-ogburn-thomas|Ogburn and Thomas's]] 1922 compilation — the founding empirical study the whole [[entity-robert-merton|Merton]] lineage builds on — names Kroeber directly as having "ably discussed" the theoretical significance of parallel invention five years before they wrote, citing "The Superorganic" by title. That citation is itself a documented case of transmission rather than independent convergence inside the very lineage the vault elsewhere treats as a chain of blind multiples.

## References

- [[claim-ogburn-thomas-1922-credits-kroeber-1917-undermining-independence]]