Robert K. Merton

Robert King Merton (born Meyer Robert Schkolnick; July 4, 1910 – February 25, 2003) was an American sociologist who is considered a founding father of modern sociology, and a major contributor to the subfield of criminology.

Robert King Merton was born on July 4, 1910, in Philadelphia as Meyer Robert Schkolnick into a family of Yiddish-speaking Russian Jews who had immigrated to the United States in 1904.

His mother was Ida Rasovskaya, an "unsynagogued" socialist who had freethinking radical sympathies.

His father was Aaron Schkolnickoff, a tailor who had officially been registered at port of entry to the United States as "Harrie Skolnick".

Merton's family lived in strained financial circumstances after his father's uninsured dairy-product shop in South Philadelphia burned down.

His father later became a carpenter's assistant to support the family.

Even though Merton grew up fairly poor, he believed that he had been afforded many opportunities.

As a student at South Philadelphia High School, he was a frequent visitor to nearby cultural and educational venues, including the Andrew Carnegie Library, the Academy of Music, the Central Library, and the Museum of Arts.

Merton began his sociological career under the guidance of George E. Simpson at Philadelphia's Temple University (1927–1931).

Merton's work as Simpson's research assistant on a project dealing with race and media introduced Merton to sociology.

Under Simpson's leadership, Merton attended an American Sociological Association annual meeting where he met Pitrim A. Sorokin, the founding chair of the sociology department at Harvard University.

Merton applied to Harvard and went to work as a research assistant to Sorokin from 1931 to 1936.

Many had doubted that Merton would be accepted into Harvard after graduating from Temple, but he quickly defied the odds and by his second year he had begun publishing with Sorokin.

By 1934, he had even begun publishing articles of his own, including: "Recent French Sociology", "The Course of Arabian Intellectual Development, 700–1300 A.D.", "Fluctuations in the Rate of Industrial Invention", and "Science and Military Technique".

In 1934 Merton married Suzanne Carhart, with whom he had one son, Robert C. Merton, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics, and two daughters, Stephanie Merton Tombrello and Vanessa Merton, a professor of law at Pace University School of Law.

After completing these, Merton went on to graduate from Harvard in 1936 with an MA and PhD in sociology.

By the end of his student career in 1938, he had already begun to embark on works that made him renowned in the sociological field, publishing his first major study, Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth-Century England, which helped create the sociology of science.

Merton's dissertation committee was composed of Sorokin, but also Talcott Parsons, the historian George Sarton, and the biochemist Lawrence Joseph Henderson.

The Merton thesis—similar to Max Weber's famous claim on the link between Protestant ethic and the capitalist economy—proposes a positive correlation between the rise of Protestant Pietism, Puritanism and early experimental science.

He served as the 47th president of the American Sociological Association.

He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University, where he attained the rank of University Professor.

Merton and Carhart separated in 1968, and she died in 1992.

In 1993 Merton married his fellow sociologist and collaborator, Harriet Zuckerman.

In 1994 he was awarded the National Medal of Science for his contributions to the field and for having founded the sociology of science.

Merton's contribution to sociology falls into three areas: (1) sociology of science; (2) sociology of crime and deviance; (3) sociological theory.

He developed notable concepts, such as "unintended consequences", the "reference group", and "role strain", but is perhaps best known for the terms "role model" and "self-fulfilling prophecy".

The concept of self-fulfilling prophecy, which is a central element in modern sociological, political, and economic theory, is one type of process through which a belief or expectation affects the outcome of a situation or the way a person or group will behave.

More specifically, as Merton defined, "the self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior, which makes the originally false conception come true".

Merton's concept of the "role model" first appeared in a study on the socialization of medical students at Columbia University.

The term grew from his theory of the reference group, the group to which individuals compare themselves but to which they do not necessarily belong.

Social roles were central to Merton's theory of social groups.

Merton emphasized that, rather than a person assuming just one role and one status, they have a status set in the social structure that has, attached to it, a whole set of expected behaviors.

In 1994, Merton stated that growing up in South Philadelphia provided young people with "every sort of capital—social capital, cultural capital, human capital, and, above all, what we may call public capital—that is, with every sort of capital except the personally financial."

He adopted the name Robert K. Merton initially as a stage name for his magic performances.

Young Merton developed a strong interest in magic, heavily influenced by his sister's boyfriend.

For his magic acts he initially chose the stage name "Merlin", but eventually settled on the surname "Merton" to further "Americanize" his immigrant-family name.

Having had failing health over the years and battling six forms of cancer, Merton died on February 23 of 2003 at the age of 92 in Manhattan.

Merton is survived by his wife, three children, nine grandchildren, and nine great- grandchildren.

He picked the given name "Robert" in honor of the 19th-century French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, widely considered the father of modern-style conjuring.

Thus his stage name became "Robert Merton", and he kept it as his personal name upon receiving a scholarship to Temple University.