American businessman, a member of the gifted Lowell family of Massachusetts and the principal founder of what is said to have been the world's first textile mill in which were performed all operations converting raw cotton into finished cloth.

While visiting the British Isles (1810–12) Lowell closely studied the textile industries of Lancashire and Scotland. On returning to the United States, he joined Patrick Tracy Jackson (his brother-in-law) and Nathan Appleton in founding the Boston Manufacturing Company, Waltham, Mass. (1812; factory built 1813–14). With the inventor Paul Moody he devised an efficient power loom as well as spinning apparatus. The working conditions in his mill and the workers' housing that he built were exemplary for the period.