American anthropologist known for her cultural and linguistic studies among the Pawnee Indians.

Originally named Regina, Gene Weltfish was born Aug. 7, 1902, on the lower east side of New York City. Following the death of her father, Weltfish went to work at age fourteen, but continued her education part-time, completing her high school degree in 1919. Weltfish attended Hunter College and later transferred to Barnard College, where she majored in philosophy and was introduced to anthropology in a course taught by Franz Boas. Graduating in 1925, Weltfish entered the graduate program in anthropology at Columbia, where in 1929 she completed her degree requirements, including a dissertation on the interrelationship of technique and design in North American Indian basketry. Unable to afford the publication of her dissertation as then required by Columbia, Weltfish did not receive her formal degree until 1950.

With her fellow graduate student and husband, Alexander Lesser, Weltfish traveled in 1928 to Oklahoma. There she began her linguistic studies among the Pawnee. Every summer, and for an entire year in 1930, Weltfish lived with the tribe, learning to weave baskets and sharing the daily lives of the women. In 1935 when Weltfish returned to the Pawnee, she set out to reconstruct the seasonal cycles of the Skidi Pawnee in Nebraska for the year 1867. She was assisted in this effort by Mark Evarts, an elderly Pawnee whose childhood was spent in Nebraska.

Weltfish returned to Columbia in the fall of 1936 to teach in the graduate anthropology program. There she taught the traditional courses and added some of her own, on invention and technology, and race relations. She also participated in the development of the School of General Studies, where she offered a wide range of anthropological courses.

During the war while Weltfish remained at Columbia, she also fought racial prejudice and lobbied for equal rights for women, authoring a pamphlet, "The Races of Mankind," at the request of the U.S.O., giving many speeches across the country, appearing on radio programs, etc. Her beliefs, activities, and the organizations she had joined in the 1940's caused her to fall victim to the anti-Communist fervor of the early 1950's. Weltfish lost her Columbia position and she was not able to obtain another teaching post for nine years.

In 1954 at the invitation of a former student, Weltfish spent four years at the University of Nebraska researching the historical, archaeological, and ethnological records of the Pawnee. She correlated this information with her 1930's field work to portray everyday life of the tribe through the seasons of one year in an influential and widely read book, The Lost Universe (1965).

From 1961 to 1972, Weltfish taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University, retiring as a full professor at age seventy. Hers was an active retirement and she taught at various universities until her death on Aug. 2, 1980.