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Biography of Talcott Parsons
Name: Talcott Parsons
Birth Date: December 13, 1902
Death Date: May 8, 1979
Place of Birth: Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Occupations: sociologist
Talcott Parsons
American sociologist, Talcott Parsons (1902-1979), analyzed the socialization process to show the relationship between personality and social structure. His work led to the development of a pioneering social theory.Talcott Parsons was born on Dec. 13, 1902, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He graduated from Amherst College in 1924, where he majored in biology, but decided to do graduate work in economics. In 1924-25 he attended the London School of Economics. He took his doctorate at Heidelberg University in Germany in 1927. While at Heidelberg, he translated Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which exercised a great influence upon young American sociologists.Parsons was an instructor in the department of economics at Harvard University from 1927 to 1931. During this period he studied the works of Alfred Marshall, the great classical theorist and codiscoverer of the principle of marginal utility; Émile Durkheim, the French sociologist; and Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian sociologist. Parsons' The Structure …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…scholarly and practical contributions in his writings on the academic profession and on racial and intercultural relations. He was elected president of the American Sociological Association in 1949 and served as secretary from 1960 to 1965.Parsons died of a stroke on May 8, 1979, while giving a series of lectures in Munich, Germany. The obituary in the New York Times the next day described Parsons as "A towering figure in the social sciences," who was responsible for "the education of three generations of sociologists." Further Reading Parsons' work is examined in M. Black, ed., The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons: A Critical Examination (1961); William C. Mitchell, Sociological Analysis and Politics: The Theories of Talcott Parsons (1967); Peter Hamilton, ed., Readings from Talcott Parsons (1985); and Roland Robertson and Bryan S. Turner, ed., Talcott Parsons: Theorist of Modernity (1991). There is also a brief discussion of Parsons' importance in Manuel Conrad Elmer, Contemporary Social Thought: Contributors and Trends (1956).
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