Louis Lionel Kaplan (1902-2001) was born in Slonim, in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus) in 1902, and was taken to the United States as a child in 1909.
Kaplan graduated from Boys High School, and went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1922,[3] and a doctorate in humane letters from Dropsie College in Philadelphia in 1927.
In addition, he studied at Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1924 to 1925 and at the American School of Oriental Research with archaeologist William Foxwell Albright.
In 1952, Governor Theodore R. McKeldin appointed him to the University of Maryland Board of Regents, and later served as chairman for five years until stepping down in 1976.
Moreover, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County awards the Louis L. Kaplan Scholarship to its most outstanding undergraduate student leaders.