Thomas P. Lowry
Thomas Power Lowry (born 1932) is an American author and retired physician. A psychiatrist by training, he turned in the 1990s to writing historical non-fiction about the American Civil War. His reputation was damaged in 2011 when he made – and subsequently recanted – a written confession that he had tampered with a document signed by President Abraham Lincoln held in the U.S. National Archives. Early life and medical career Lowry was born in Northern California, the son of a naval officer. He received an M.D. from Stanford University in 1957, later practicing as a psychiatrist and marriage counsellor. In the 1970s he and then-wife Thea Snyder Lowry (1932–2002) served on the staff of the Masters and Johnson Clinic in St. Louis as part of the research team investigating sexual dynamics and relationships. During this period Lowry published what he would later describe as "several very dull medical books." Nonetheless, his 1976 work on the human clitoris was positively reviewed in the Journal of Sex Research. He was later a clinical associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Later writing career After retiring from a four-decade career in medicine, Lowry — assisted by a new wife, Beverly —