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List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#2801

George C. Homans

1910 - 1989 (79 years)

George Caspar Homans was an American sociologist, founder of behavioral sociology, the 54th president of the American Sociological Association, and one of the architects of social exchange theory. Homans is best known in science for his research in social behavior and his works The Human Group, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, his contributions to exchange theory, and the different propositions he developed to explain social behavior. He is also the third great grandson of the second President of the United States, John Adams.

#2802

Bernard Berelson

1912 - 1979 (67 years)

Bernard Reuben Berelson was an American behavioral scientist, known for his work on communication and mass media. He was a leading proponent of the broad idea of the "behavioral sciences", a field he saw as including areas such as public opinion. In Chapter 14 of Voting , he enunciated what has become known as Berelson's paradox on democracy: while classical theories of its success assume voters committed to interest in public life, this fails to correspond with practical politics, while the system itself functions.

#2803

Theodore Fred Abel

1896 - 1988 (92 years)

Theodore Fred Abel was an American sociology professor who collected the largest single archive of first person accounts from people who joined Hitler's National Socialist movement. The collection of men's accounts was published in 1938 in a book titled Why Hitler Came to Power. The women's accounts were set aside to publish at a later date. Those accounts were lost and then rediscovered in the archives of the Hoover Institute in Palo Alto, after which three Florida State University professors arranged to have them transcribed, translated and digitized. This collection of first person account...

#2804

Max Horkheimer

1895 - 1973 (78 years)

Max Horkheimer was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militarism, economic disruption, environmental crisis, and the poverty of mass culture using the philosophy of history as a framework. This became the foundation of critical theory. His most important works include Eclipse of Reason , Between Philosophy and Social Science and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment . Through the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer planned, suppo...

#2805

Morris Janowitz

1919 - 1988 (69 years)

Morris Janowitz was an American sociologist and professor who made major contributions to sociological theory, the study of prejudice, urban issues, and patriotism. He was one of the founders of military sociology and made major contributions, along with Samuel P. Huntington, to the establishment of contemporary civil-military relations. He was a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago and held a five-year chairmanship of the Sociology Department at University of Chicago. He was the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.

#2806

Samuel A. Stouffer

Samuel A. Stouffer

1900 - 1960 (60 years)

Samuel Andrew Stouffer was a prominent American sociologist and developer of survey research techniques. Stouffer spent much of his career attempting to answer the fundamental question: How does one measure an attitude?

#2807

Mary Frank Fox

Mary Frank Fox is Dean's Distinguished Professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a pioneer and leader in the study of women and men in academic and scientific occupations and organizations. Her work has introduced and established the ways that participation and performance in science reflect and are affected by complex social-organizational processes. Fox's research is published in over 60 different scholarly and scientific journals, books, and collections, including Social Studies of Science, Science, Technology, and Human Values, Sociology of Edu...

#2808

Nicholas Timasheff

1886 - 1970 (84 years)

Nicholas Sergeyevitch Timasheff was a Russian sociologist, professor of jurisprudence and writer. Biography Timasheff "came from an old family of Russian nobility"; his father was Minister of Trade and Industry under Nicholas II. In St. Petersburg, where he was born, he attended a classical high school; he went on to attend the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, the University of Strasbourg, and the Saint Petersburg State University . At the latter university he met the Polish-Russian jurist Leon Petrazycki, who was a significant influence on him throughout his life. Two years later he began teaching sociological jurisprudence at the University of Petrograd.

#2809

William Fielding Ogburn

1886 - 1959 (73 years)

William Fielding Ogburn was an American sociologist who was born in Butler, Georgia and died in Tallahassee, Florida. He was also a statistician and an educator. Ogburn received his B.A. degree from Mercer University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. He was a professor of sociology at Columbia from 1919 until 1927, when he became chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago.

#2810

Donald Cressey

1919 - 1987 (68 years)

Dr. Donald Ray Cressey was an American penologist, sociologist, and criminologist who made innovative contributions to the study of organized crime, prisons, criminology, the sociology of criminal law, white-collar crime.

#2811

Ernest Burgess

1886 - 1966 (80 years)

Ernest Watson Burgess was a Canadian-American urban sociologist born in Tilbury, Ontario. He was educated at Kingfisher College in Oklahoma and continued graduate studies in sociology at the University of Chicago. In 1916, he returned to the University of Chicago, as a faculty member. Burgess was hired as an urban sociologist at the University of Chicago. Burgess also served as the 24th President of the American Sociological Association .

#2812

T. H. Marshall

1893 - 1981 (88 years)

Thomas Humphrey Marshall was an English sociologist who is best known for his essay "Citizenship and Social Class," a key work on citizenship that introduced the idea that full citizenship includes civil, political, and social citizenship.

#2813

Richard LaPiere

1899 - 1986 (87 years)

Richard Tracy LaPiere was a professor of sociology at Stanford University from 1929 to 1965. Early years and education Born in Beloit, Wisconsin, LaPiere obtained his B.A. in Economics , followed by his M.A in Sociology and his Ph.D in Sociology , all at Stanford University.

#2814

Luther L. Bernard

1881 - 1951 (70 years)

Luther Lee Bernard was an American sociologist and psychologist. He was the 22nd President of the American Sociological Association . He has been described as "among the best known U.S. sociologist in the country... between the 1920 and the 1940,".

#2815

Frederick H. Harbison

1912 - 1976 (64 years)

Frederick Harris Harbison was an American labor economist and Professor of Labor Economics at Princeton University. He was known for his 1959 study Management in the industrial world and other works on labor and management.

#2816

Bernard E. Proctor

1901 - 1959 (58 years)

Bernard E. Proctor was an American food scientist who was involved in early research on food irradiation. Early life A native of Malden, Massachusetts, Proctor graduated from Malden High in 1919, then graduated with an S.B. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1923. He would then earn his Ph.D. at MIT in 1927.

#2817

Harry Alpert

1912 - 1977 (65 years)

Harry Alpert was an American sociologist, best known for his directorship of the National Science Foundation's social science program in the 1950s. During his time at the NSF , Alpert guided the development of the U.S. NSF's earliest efforts to provide funding to the social sciences, and helped to establish the agency's basic policy framework for funding social science research and fellowships. In his short five-year term as director, Alpert was able to establish a viable policy framework for NSF funding that would help to demonstrate both the value and scientific legitimacy of social scienc...

#2818

Donald Francis Roy

1909 - 1980 (71 years)

Donald Francis Roy was a sociologist on the faculty of Duke University from 1950 to 1979. Well known for his field work into industrial working conditions, workplace interactions, social conflict, and the role of unions. Roy received a bachelor's degree and master's from the University of Washington where he did ethnographic fieldwork in a Seattle shantytown and his PhD from the University of Chicago. Roy's work surveys much of blue-collar America , and is of great importance to Marxist analysis of the time.

#2819

Adolf Sturmthal

1903 - 1986 (83 years)

Adolf Fox Sturmthal was a U.S. political scientist, sociologist and journalist of Austrian birth who specialised in labour studies and international relations. Biography Sturmthal earned a PhD in Political Science in 1925 at Vienna University. He was chairman of the Association of Austrian Social Democratic Students and Academics. He moved to Zurich in 1926 to assist Friedrich Adler, the secretary of the Labour and Socialist International, and was editor of International Information. In 1933 and 1934 he organised international aid for German and Austrian socialist refugees from the Austrofascist Dollfuss and Nazi regimes.

#2820

G. Malcolm Trout

1896 - 1990 (94 years)

George Malcolm Trout An American dairy industry pioneer, writer, researcher, and professor emeritus in food science at Michigan State University. Trout is credited with finding the key to the creation of homogenized milk.

#2821

Ruth Peterson

1900 - Present (126 years)

Ruth Delois Peterson is an American sociologist and criminologist known for her work on racial and ethnic inequality and crime. She earned her PhD in sociology from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1983. Peterson is emerita professor of sociology at the Ohio State University, former director of the Criminal Justice Research Center , and former president of the American Society of Criminology . She is the namesake of the American Society of Criminology's Ruth D. Peterson Fellowship for Racial and Ethnic Diversity.

#2822

John M. Gillette

1866 - 1949 (83 years)

John Morris Gillette was an American sociologist, specializing in rural sociology, and the 18th president of the American Sociological Association . Biography Before pursuing an academic career, in 1895 Gillette briefly served as a Presbyterian minister in Dodge City, Kansas. He received his MA from Princeton University in 1895 and his Ph.D. from the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1899 and then in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1901.

#2823

Lowell Juilliard Carr

1885 - 1963 (78 years)

Lowell Juilliard Carr was an American sociologist, author, and long-time university professor. He is best known for his book Willow Run, which discusses the sociological conditions arising from the wartime increase in the worker population at the Willow Run bomber plant during World War II. He was also a pioneer in the field of studying the underlying social causes for juvenile delinquency.

#2824

Benjamin Mays

1894 - 1984 (90 years)

Benjamin Elijah Mays was an American Baptist minister and American rights leader who is credited with laying the intellectual foundations of the American civil rights movement. Mays taught and mentored many influential activists, including Martin Luther King Jr, Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson, and Donn Clendenon, among others. His rhetoric and intellectual pursuits focused on Black self-determination. Mays' commitment to social justice through nonviolence and civil resistance were cultivated from his youth through the lessons imbibed from his parents and eldest sister. The peak of his public i...

#2825

Joachim Wach

1898 - 1955 (57 years)

Joachim Ernst Adolphe Felix Wach was a German religious scholar from Chemnitz, who emphasized a distinction between the Religious Studies and the philosophy of religion. Wach was descended on both sides from the famous Mendelssohn family, both the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. He shared the latter's love of music and was said to have inherited some important papers and relics of his ancestor. After schooling in Dresden, he enlisted in the German army in 1916, where he served as a cavalry officer. After World War I, he studied at the Universities of Munich, Berlin, Freiburg, and Leipzig, where he received his PhD in 1922.

#2826

Alexander Goldenweiser

1880 - 1940 (60 years)

Alexander Aleksandrovich Goldenweiser was a Russian-born U.S. anthropologist and sociologist. Biography Alexander Alexandrovich Goldenweiser was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1880. He emigrated to the United States in 1900. He studied anthropology under Franz Boas, and earned his AB degree from Columbia University in 1902, his AM degree in 1904, and his Ph.D. in 1910.

#2827

Albert Salomon

1891 - 1966 (75 years)

Albert Salomon was a German-Jewish sociologist. He was the nephew of Alice Salomon, a pioneer of the academic discipline of social work. Studies He first studied history of art, history of religions and philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1910. He later studied philosophy in Freiburg and Heidelberg, where he came into contact with Max Weber and Georg Lukács, among others. During World War I, he served as a nurse, and in 1921 he took his doctorate in the culture of friendship in Germany in the 19th Century.

#2828

Marcel Granet

1884 - 1940 (56 years)

Marcel Granet was a French sociologist, ethnologist and sinologist. As a follower of Émile Durkheim and Édouard Chavannes, Granet was one of the first to bring sociological methods to the study of China. Granet was revered in his own time as a sociological sinologist, or sinological sociologist, and member of the Durkheimian school of sociology.

#2829

John Porter

1921 - 1979 (58 years)

John Arthur Porter was a Canadian sociologist from 1950 to the late 1970s. His work in the field of social stratification opened up new areas of inquiry for many sociologists in Canada. Porter was born in Vancouver and completed his education at the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom. There, he became interested in studies of social class. On returning to Canada he joined the faculty of Carleton University. He remained at Carleton as a professor, and later, as department chairman, dean and academic vice-president. He was also visiting professor at Harvard and the University of ...

#2830

Paul Massing

1902 - 1979 (77 years)

Paul Wilhelm Massing was a German sociologist. Life and career Born in Grumbach in the Rhine Province, he attended school in Cologne, and later studied economics and social sciences at Frankfurt University, when Franz Neumann was there and at Cologne Handelshochschule . He graduated in 1926 as a Diplom-Kaufmann . A year later, he studied for one term at the Sorbonne in Paris and prepared his dissertation on agrarian conditions of France in 19th century and the agrarian program of the French socialist parties. In 1928, he returned to Frankfurt University to study with Wilhelm Gerloff and at...

#2831

Delores P. Aldridge

1900 - Present (126 years)

Delores P. Aldridge is an American sociologist. Aldridge was the first African-American faculty member at Emory University, and the founder of the first African American and African studies program in the American south.

#2832

Charles Josiah Galpin

1864 - 1947 (83 years)

Charles Josiah Galpin was an American academic. Galpin was a trailblazer of rural sociology, known for advancing research in analysis of rural populations, rural standards of living, rural social organization, and social structures. Galpin was a rural sociologist, professor, author, pastor, and advocate for rural populations. He published 112 works in 245 publications in one language and 2,667 library holdings including The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community ; Rural Life ; My Drift into Rural Sociology ; and Rural Social Problems . His early career set the stage for his influential c...

#2833

Paul Fauconnet

1874 - 1938 (64 years)

Paul Fauconnet was a French sociologist who is best known as a contributor to the L'Année Sociologique. Fauconnet aggregated in philosophy in 1892 and earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1895. He also earned a further doctorate in law in 1920, although his interest in the law was purely scholarly and he never practiced as a lawyer. He became a professor at the faculty of letters in 1907 at the University of Toulouse and later chargé de cours at the faculty of letters in 1921 in Paris, obtaining a chair in 1932. His dissertation was entitled La responsabilité: Etude de sociologie . It adopt...

#2834

Eddie Roux

1903 - 1966 (63 years)

Eddie Roux was a Transvaal Colony-born botanist, academic, writer, member of the South African Communist Party and anti-apartheid activist. Early life He was born Edward Roux to Afrikaner father Phillip R. Roux, a pharmacist and botanist, who was involved in the Labour Party and English mother, Edith May Wilson. He grew up in Bezuidenhout Valley, Johannesburg. Roux's political view were further inspired by the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution. After matriculating at Jeppe High School, he enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand and studied botany and zoology. At university, he joined ...

#2835

Shridhar Venkatesh Ketkar

1884 - 1937 (53 years)

Shridhar Venkatesh Ketkar was a Marathi sociologist, historian and novelist from Maharashtra, India. He is principally known as the chief editor of Maharashtriya Jnanakosha, the first-ever encyclopedia in the Marathi language.

#2836

Hilda Weiss

1900 - 1981 (81 years)

Hilda Weiss was a sociologist, trade unionist, and socialist. She lived in Germany until 1933 when Hitler came to power, then escaped to France. In 1939 she emigrated to the United States and lived there until her death in 1981.

#2837

Vera Mae Green

1928 - 1982 (54 years)

Vera Mae Green was an American anthropologist, educator, and scholar, who made major contributions in the fields of Caribbean studies, interethnic studies, black family studies and the study of poverty and the poor. She was one of the first African-American Caribbeanists and the first to focus on Dutch Caribbean culture. She developed a "methodology for the study of African American Anthropology" that acknowledged the diversity among and within black families, communities and cultures. Her other areas of research included mestizos in Mexico and communities in India and Israel. "[C]ommitted to...

#2838

Arthur Salz

1881 - 1963 (82 years)

Arthur Salz was a German professor of sociology and economics who wrote on mercantilism, imperialism, and power. He taught at the University of Heidelberg before being forced to flee Germany because of his Jewish faith. He was familiar with the Stefan George circle and married Sophie Kantorowiz, the sister of historian Ernst Kantorowicz.

#2839

Patrick Murphy Malin

1903 - 1964 (61 years)

Patrick Murphy Malin was an American activist and administrator who followed Roger Nash Baldwin as the second Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Early life Malin was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1903, the son of a banker. He entered the family business at age ten, and was expected to eventually become president of the bank. However, Woodrow Wilson's World War I speeches gave him a desire to travel and get a government job. He attended the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, graduating as valedictorian in 1924.

#2840

William Lyman Underwood

1864 - 1929 (65 years)

William Lyman Underwood was an American photographer who was also involved in the research of time-temperature canning research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1895 to 1896. Biography A native of Boston, Massachusetts, Underwood was the second son of William James Underwood, one of the nine children of William Underwood, the founder of the William Underwood Company.

#2841

Joseph Husslein

1873 - 1952 (79 years)

Joseph C. Husslein, S.J. was a key figure in the early twentieth century in the development of American Catholic social thought. Husslein was one of several figures, such as John A. Ryan, trying to apply the Catholic social teaching of Pope Leo XIII’s watershed encyclical Rerum novarum . In the next decades Husslein would write over 500 articles on Catholic social teaching. The national Jesuit weekly magazine America published most of these articles. Husslein worked as an editor of the magazine.

#2842

Stanisław Ossowski

Stanisław Ossowski

1897 - 1963 (66 years)

Stanisław Ossowski was one of Poland's most important sociologists. He held professorships at Łódź University and Warsaw University . Life Ossowski first contributed to logic and aesthetics before moving on to sociology. He studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw, his teachers were i.a. Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Jan Łukasiewicz and Władysław Tatarkiewicz. He also studied in Paris , in Rome and in London. He took part in the 1920 war. Doctorate wrote to Tadeusz Kotarbiński at the University of Warsaw. He took part in the September campaign. He spent the occupation in Lviv and Warsaw. He ta...

#2843

Eva Verbitsky Hunt

1934 - 1980 (46 years)

Muriel Eva Verbitsky de Hunt was an Argentine cultural anthropologist, academic and writer who moved to the United States in the late 1950s. She is remembered for her contributions to symbolic anthropology and ethnohistory. Together with her husband Robert Hunt, she performed innovative regional work in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1960s.

#2844

Mary Roberts Coolidge

Mary Roberts Coolidge

1860 - 1945 (85 years)

Mary Roberts Coolidge , also known as Mary Roberts Smith, was an American sociologist and author. She was an instructor at Wellesley College before joining the faculty of Stanford University, where she became the first full-time American professor of sociology. She later founded the sociology department of Mills College.

#2845

Elmer Pendell

1894 - 1982 (88 years)

Elmer Pendell was an American eugenicist and sociologist. Early life Pendell was born in Waverly, New York to George and Ida Harris PenDell. Pendell received his B.S. from the University of Oregon; M.A. from the University of Chicago; PhD from Cornell University; L.L.B. from George Washington University.

#2846

Yves Stourdzé

1947 - 1986 (39 years)

Yves Stourdzé was a French sociologist. He studied technical and institutional conditions for innovation and how acceptable the effects of these are on society. He has also produced one of the most pertinent analyses of the phenomenon of informatization.

#2847

David Glass

1911 - 1978 (67 years)

David Victor Glass was an eminent English sociologist and was one of the few sociologists elected to the Royal Society. He is also one of the very few people to be elected both Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow of the Royal Society. He was professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, 1948–1978.

#2848

Mary Mims

1882 - 1967 (85 years)

Mary Mims was born in Minden, Louisiana. She was a community organizer, teacher, educator, humanitarian, lecturer, and a pioneering sociologist. She was the founder of the "community organization movement" in cooperative extension. She was an extension services specialist in community organizing and worked for Louisiana State University. She was a state community worker for Louisiana.

#2849

Walter Schiff

1866 - 1950 (84 years)

#2850

Georges Davy

1883 - 1976 (93 years)

Georges Davy was a French sociologist. He was a student and disciple of Émile Durkheim. With Marcel Mauss and Paul Huvelin he pioneered anthropological studies of the origins of the idea of contract.

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