Robert Richardson Bowie (August 24, 1909 – November 2, 2013) was an American diplomat and scholar. Bowie graduated from Princeton University in 1931 and received a law degree from Harvard University in 1934 and turned down offers to work as a corporate lawyer with New York's major law firms, returning to Baltimore to work in his father's law firm, Bowie and Burke. He served in the U.S. Army (1942–1946) as a commissioned officer with the Pentagon and in occupied Germany from 1945 until 1946. In 1946 he resigned as a lieutenant-colonel. He taught at Harvard from 1946-1955. The youngest professor of the school, he was a trusted confidant to John J. McCloy, the "unofficial chairman of the American establishment." During periods of leave from Harvard between 1950 and 1952 Bowie worked for McClo