Theodora Kroeber was the wife of famous American anthropologist Alfred Kroeber (1876–1960). Alfred Kroeber, who knew and studied Ishi, provided much of the information for his wife's biography of Ishi. Theodora Kroeber felt that it was her responsibility to write a biography of Ishi. After publishing the book in 1961, a year after her husband's death, Theodora Kroeber was overwhelmed by the number of emotional responses to Ishi's story. She called the outpouring in response to Ishi's story "the greatest human experience of my life."