Lowell Melcher Clucas III was born July 11, 1944 in CA. He died at age 41 January 9, 1986 in Philadelphia, PA. At Menlo-Atherton Lowell was Managing Editor for the school newspaper, "Bear Tracks". Lowell matriculated at UCLA and took a BA degree in German language and literature in 1966. He then enrolled at San Francisco State where for three years he studied classical Greek history, mastered the fundamentals of classical Greek, learned to speak Modern Greek and earned a master's degree.

During this period of intense work on Byzantium, Lowell displayed his great philological dexterity and his intellectual brilliance and by 1975 he received his doctoral degree. He then served as a Byzantine Research Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and a joint professorship with the Department of History.

Lowell also wrote beautiful poetry, which included a collection of poems, An Indian Triptych and other Poems, published by The Red Chrysanthemum Press, Berkeley, 1984. He also published in such poetic journals as The Blue Cloud Quarterly, a magazine of Native American themes, and in Hard Pressed. Lowell’s obituary stated that his life was tragically terminated by death at the moment of the full bloom of his intellectual powers and their scholarly realization. (Top photo is from M-A sophomore year 1959-1960. Photo below is from junior year when Lowell was Managing Editor for the M-A newspaper, "Bear Tracks".)