Her father was the anthropologist, Miguel (Misha) Adler, from Noua Sulitä, Bessarabia. She pioneered the study of social networks and the study of the importance of trust for the economyand politics. Her first study in this regard focused on the ex- change of favors in the Chilean middle class. Lomnitz completed her doctoral thesis about the importance of exchanging favors and confidence in the informal economy in Mexico City. She then explored the importance of social networks in very diverse fields: scientific communities, the Mexican upper class, and theteaching profession in Chile, among others. Lomnitz was a member of several societies and academies, in- cluding the Mexican Society of Anthropology, the Mexican Academy of Sciences, the Society of Urban Anthropology and Economics, The College of Ethnologists and Anthropologists, and the Javier Barros Sierra Foundation. She served as president of the Society for Latin American Anthropology, and was the director of the War and Peace Studies Commission of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. She was a member of the Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Forum on Higher Education Research and Knowledge. She was an emeritus researcher for the National Svstem of Researchers and a member of the Science Advisory Council of the Presidency of the Republic. In 2010, she was elected a member oft h e American Academy of Arts andSciences.