Ivan Lowe (1922-2021)

Ivan Lowe (1922-2021)
SIL Brazil & Global

Ivan is one who keeps the academic fires of SIL burning. He keeps reminding us that part of our God given task is the study of linguistics.

Our wonderful friend and colleague, Ivan Lowe, has gone on to meet the Lord in person. He was born on 11 August 1922 in Napier, New Zealand to immigrants from South China and passed away on 23 December 2021 (age 99) in Cambridge, UK from advanced cancer. Many of us knew Ivan from a conference, workshop, or training session where he inspired us with his passion for God, for Scriptures, and for the languages that God gave to humankind. In these tributes, we remember Ivan and give thanks for a life well-lived.

His daughter, Angelina, says:

• .... my father “took an upgrade on his Christmas plans” and went to behold the glory of John 1:14 face-to-face
• To be honest, although he will leave a big hole, I cannot help but be thrilled for Dad. 
• He always sang very lustily in church as you may remember,  and I feel that I can almost hear him singing joyfully now. 
• ...it was inspiring to see how the Lord kept him and sustained him till the end, helping him remain content whenever conscious and with no signs of anxiety or pain (though he did have pain patch meds too).

 Peter Kingston has collected memories from Ivan's colleagues and students and compiled them into a fascinating 19-page Ivan Lowe Remembrance Booklet. You can email him for a copy. Ivan's life can be summarized in this one verse: "Lord, all that we have accomplished, You have done for us." Peter writes:

• Ivan was always very proud of being a Kiwi; New Zealand was joint top with Brazil in his heart. But times were hard as he helped the family run a fruit shop as well as going to school. One particularly kind customer helped him with his chores and told him the Gospel. So, as a boy, Ivan put his trust in Christ, but did not act much on his faith until he met students in the Cambridge University Christian Union.
• He first went to the University of New Zealand, receiving a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) in 1944; in 1945, he earned a Bachelor of Science; in 1946 a Masters in Science, with First Class Honours in Mathematics. He was then awarded a post graduate scholarship to go to Cambridge, UK.  At Cambridge, he achieved a "Double first" in the Maths tripos. Then in 1952, a PhD in Solid State Physics.
• In 1952-53, Ivan returned to New Zealand as a Maths lecturer at the University of Otago, Dunedin, then obtained a research associate position at Imperial College London, going on to become a Maths Lecturer there.
• In 1956, he was accepted into Wycliffe UK and in 1957, resigned from Imperial College, starting with Wycliffe in 1958. In 1959, he went to the SIL Branch in Brazil and began working with the Nambikuara people as a Linguist/Translator. He also did linguistics consultation, helped other teams, and taught linguistics quite widely in Brazil, England, Oklahoma and with Professor Ken L. Pike at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
• In 1967, while he was teaching in England, he met Margaret Small, and they were married in Brasilia in 1969 and had two children. Together, they continued active in the Nambikuara team until 1977 when they formally ceased their work there, visiting them again only in 2003. By this time, the entire NT in Nambikuara had been published.
• Ivan's life now was as an International Linguistics Consultant, travelling widely, and teaching in schools (especially the British SIL). He visited, among other countries, Suriname, Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, Togo, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Malaysia. He was coordinator for Linguistics in research, writing, and special projects such as video. In 1990, he taught the first Advanced Linguistic Analysis course and in 1991, founded the Graduate Research Intern Programme (GRIP), coordinating it until 1997. In 2000, he introduced Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) into the UK training programme.
• From 2002 – 2006, he continued teaching the  Advanced Language Analysis (ALA) every year, while working on developing a new approach to learning NT Greek for linguists. In his final ALA course he taught with his old friend and colleague Bob Dooley.
• When they visited the Nambikuara in 2003, Ivan and Margaret noted some remarkable changes since they had first been there. “When we were first there, there were approximately 250 Nambiquaras in just three villages. Most of the Indians had died of a sickness brought in by outsiders in 1946, probably measles. Now numbers are estimated at about 1,000. Then, the few children were pot-bellied and lethargic due to parasites and lack of good protein. Now there are lively, happy children wherever you look. Many of the younger people can read now. Some of the young men are at a local Bible college where they are getting further training. What has brought about the change? Well, the Good News brought hope where there was none.”
• Ivan was a passionate advocate for the role of linguistics in the Bible Translation movement. He had an insatiable passion for seeking out the most up-to-date theories and tools that would help Bible translators improve the work they were doing.  He continued to keep in touch with cutting-edge developments in linguistic theory throughout his career.
•  A former SIL International Linguistics Coordinator once said of him, “Ivan is one who keeps the academic fires of SIL burning. He keeps reminding us that part of our God given task is the study of Linguistics.” He was always anxious that this remain central to the work. This firmly held belief, coupled with his equally passionate belief in the power and authority of the Word, underlies much of Ivan's enormous contribution to the Bible Translation movement.

 Mary Pearce remembers: Ivan Lowe was enthusiastic about phonology and he focused more on encouraging those who showed good capability, rather than on the skills taught in a standard course. He gave extensive homework to stretch those who could do more. He also developed a video series at a time when not many used video for teaching. I taught alongside him in the British SIL school. I was somewhat in awe of him, but he believed in me and was encouraging when I decided to do research in phonology. I think most of those who have spent time at Horsleys Green will remember Ivan doing a Monolingual Demonstration. This is where he demonstrated the first stages of learning a language from a speaker who pretended not to speak English. I think he did these demos so often that it was quite hard to find a speaker of a language that he had not already investigated!

Bob Dooley remembers: Ivan's strong point was in consulting, giving workshops, getting good consultants, such as Joe Grimes, to come down to Brazil, and training younger consultants such as myself - all very valuable contributions, but without much of a paper trail. I particularly benefited from Ivan's contributions: he was used by the Lord to call me into Bible translation (via an article he wrote for the old Translation magazine, "Christian mathematicians, where are you?"), and later to work in Brazil. Once I got down there, I was a consultant-in-training under him and benefited from his very clear & stimulating lectures in several workshops. Those were good old three-week workshops back then; by the end, many of the participants produced a publishable paper.

Dave Eberhard says: Ivan was one of the pioneers of our understanding of the Nambikwara language family - and a novel thinker. The SIL Brazil website lists a number of his publications. He was a prolific researcher and a great help to SIL colleagues in their linguistic journey. His most cited work by Nambikwara scholars, is:

• Lowe, Ivan. 1999. Nambiquara. In R.M.W Dixon & A.Y. Aikhenvald (eds.). The Amazonian languages, 268-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.