Vera D. Rubin

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Vera Dourmashkin Rubin (August 6, 1911 – February 7, 1985) was an American anthropologist who founded and led the Research Institute for the Study of Man (RISM) for 30 years. Born in Moscow, she moved to the United States with her family in 1912. Her father was Elias Dourmashkin, editor of a Russian-language newspaper. Rubin studied French literature at New York University, graduating in 1930, and later pursued anthropology at Columbia University, working with Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Julian Steward. She earned her PhD from Columbia in 1952.

In 1955 Rubin started RISM in New York to promote Caribbean anthropology and fieldwork, serving as its director until her death. The institute’s headquarters at 162 East 78th Street also housed the Library for Caribbean Research. Her work helped build a lasting program for studying Caribbean cultures and aging.

Her notable projects include a 1975 study on marijuana use in Jamaica with Lambros Comitas, which suggested no significant adverse health effects from chronic use. She also led a collaboration between RISM and the Soviet Academy of Sciences to study aging and longevity in Kentucky and in Abkhazia in the Caucasus. Rubin served as president of the Society for Applied Anthropology and as director of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, which later became the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice.

Rubin was married to philanthropist Samuel Rubin; they had two children, Reed and activist Cora Weiss, and later divorced. She received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Brooklyn College in 1981 and, shortly before her death, an honorary PhD from the University of the West Indies. She died in Manhattan in 1985 at age 73, after being named president-elect of the Caribbean Studies Association.