Social Science Space

Denis McQuail, the British social scientist and foundational theorist in mass communication both through his scholarship and his hugely influential textbook ‘McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory,’ died at age 82.

The late Stanford professor Kenneth Arrow was considered one of the most influential economists in history with monumental and lasting contributions to the field. His work included some explanation for why election results can turn out as they do, not always the way most voters would prefer.

Hans Rosling, a epidemiologist whose gained global attention with twin messages of the power of stats and of hope, has died.

Anthony King, a political scientist whose career ranged from the most serious of scholarship to popular explanation on the BBC, has died at 82.

Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish-born sociologist and social theorist whose influential work examined the intertwined themes of globalization, consumerism and modernity, has died at age 91.

Erich Bloch was the first non-academic to serve as director of the NSF. Although a computer engineer by background, he recognized the value of the social and behavioral sciences.

One of the first four graduates of MIT’s Department of Psychology and a pioneer for data-intensive studies of vision and cognition, Whitman Richards died on Sept. 16 at his home. He was 84.

Sociologist Sharit Kumar Bhowmik, best known for his work on informal labor and most specifically on street vendors in India, has died.

John Urry, a sociologist probably best known for his work on mobilities but whose gaze also lit on issues ranging from tourism to energy use, from social change to complexity theory, died suddenly on March 18.

Doreen Massey’s academic career combined the geographer’s focus on space with an advocate’s focus on inequality and class. Massey died Friday at age 72.

Douglass C. North’s contributions to economic theory have had an enormous influence on how scholars understand institutions and the process of economic change.

René Girard, whose academic career began in literary theory, and whose own theory of mimesis influenced people ranging from J.M. Coetzee to the founder of PayPal, died last week at his home at Stanford.