Lowenstam began his collegiate studies in the
vertebrate paleontology program at the
University of Frankfurt, but arrived to find the program collapsing due to the recent death of the university's leading paleontologist. He transferred to the
University of Munich in the
fall of 1933, studying under Professors Broili, Edgar Dacqué, and the biologist
Karl von Frisch. Lowenstam's studies in Munich coincided with Adolf Hitler's rise to power and the deterioration of conditions for German Jews. According to his biographer, Joseph L. Kirschvink, "In 1935, he declared his intention of conducting his Ph.D. field research in Palestine, to the dismay of his pro-Nazi department chairman". Lowenstam discussed his situation with the geology faculty at the
University of Chicago, and was accepted to complete his degree, on the merit of recommendations from his mentors Broili and Dacqué. He received his Ph.D. in 1939, whereupon he immediately enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight the Nazis. The
U.S. military decided that his skills would be of more use in civilian work, developing coal and oil reserves with the
Illinois Geological Survey. Subsequently, Lowenstam worked for a small oil company, then moved on to become a curator of invertebrate paleontology at the
Illinois State Museum. There, Lowenstam conducted field research on the paleoecology of coral reef environments via the Stony Island line of the Chicago street-car system, which dead-ended at an area rich with fossilized coral reefs. This work ultimately resulted in Lowenstam's discovery of a "massive system of Silurian reefs that stretched from the edge of the
Ozark Mountains to Greenland". "Prior to this discovery, magnetite was thought to form only in igneous or metamorphic rocks under high temperatures and pressures". In his 1962 paper Lowenstam noted the implications of his discovery with his observation that the chitons were known for their local homing instinct, implying that they may be using a magnetite compass to aid in navigation. Subsequent researchers building upon this work have "confirmed the central role of magnetite as the biophysical transducer of the magnetic field in living organisms spanning the evolutionary spectrum from the magnetotactic bacteria to mammals, with a fossil record extending back at least 2 billion years on Earth and perhaps 4 billion years on Mars". Lowenstam left implications of biomagnetism for others to explore and continued to pursue answers to how organisms control mineral formation. Over the next two decades Lowenstam continued to discover and catalog biologically precipitated minerals and document their phyletic distribution, as well as attempt to track their evolutionary origin. He remained at
Caltech as a revered professor until his death in 1993. ==Honours and awards==