Merton, Robert K(ing)

orig. Meyer R. Schkolnick

(born July 4, 1910, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Feb. 23, 2003, New York, N.Y.) U.S. sociologist. After receiving a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1936, Merton taught there and at Tulane University before moving to Columbia University, where he was a professor from 1941 to 1979. His diverse interests included deviant behaviour, the sociology of science, and mass communications, and he generally advanced a functionalist approach to the study of society. He was awarded a National Medal of Science in 1994. Among his writings are Mass Persuasion (1946), Social Theory and Social Structure (1949), On the Shoulders of Giants (1965), and The Sociology of Science (1973). See also bureaucracy; functionalism.

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