Social Science Space

Neil Salkind, a child development psychologist whose academic writing endeared him to generations of students struggling with statistics, has died at age 70. Salkind, a professor emeritus at the University of Kansas, died from melanoma at his home in Lawrence, Kansas on November 18.

Sociologist Neil Smelser, whose research on collective behavior and economic sociology were rivaled by his tenure as a mentor, teacher, and liaison to a restive University of California-Berkeley student body in the 1960s, has died at age 87.

One of the founding fathers of the field of evaluation, Daniel L. Stufflebeam of Western Michigan University, has died at age 80.

Peter Berger, a sociologist of religion, unlikely culture warrior and founder of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs on Boston University, has died at age 88.

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.