Alexander Spoehr was of German, Danish, and Austrian descent.
Spoehr remained at the University of Chicago for graduate study in anthropology, researching the Seminole in Florida.
In January 1940, Spoehr began working at the Field Museum.
[1] Spoehr had been named leader of the East–West Center in 1961, and served from 1962 until his resignation in 1963 to teach at the University of Pittsburgh.
[3] In 2019, a little girl whom he had photographed on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1947 without recording her name was identified by her son while exploring the museum's Pacific Islander cultural collections,[4] an incident that gained some attention in the media.