Robert King Merton was born on July 4, 1910, in Philadelphia as Meyer Robert Schkolnick into a family of Yiddish-speaking
Even … See more

Merton taught at Harvard until 1938, when he became professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology at Tulane University. In 1941, he joined the Columbia University faculty, where he spent the vast majority of … See more

Upon moving to Columbia in 1941, Merton joined Paul Lazarsfeld, who was introducing quantitative methods into empirical research in sociology. Lazarsfeld and Merton emphasized the importance of “systemati… See more

Merton was heavily influenced by Talcott Parsons and to a much lesser degree by Pitirim Sorokin. Indeed, Merton's choice of dissertation topic reflect profoundly the interest from Parsons and was not of Sorokin's li… See more

Today, Merton is viewed as one of the founding fathers of modern-day sociology. His works are seen as the driving force of many of today's sociologists' studies. Merton's friends and colleagues credit his guidance t… See more

Over his career, Merton published some 50 papers in the sociology of science. Among many other fields and topics to which he contributed his ideas and theories were deviance theory, Organization theory, and middle-ran… See more