P ark, R obert E .

Abstract

Robert E. Park (1864–1944) played a major role in the development of the University of Chicago's School of Sociology, which set the tone of much of sociological research in the United States for the last part of the twentieth century. Park worked for Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute, then educated several generations of sociologists at the University of Chicago, where he was particularly interested in what he defined as three fields: “collective behavior, human ecology, and race relations.” Park's textbook, Introduction to the Science of Sociology , was written with E. W. Burgess, and was a standard in the field for years. Park's understanding of the need for the empirical study of real‐world data was coupled with a democratic social psychology, and was spread both through Park's many students and his widely read texts.