William Graham Sumner
Sign in to saveAlso known as William G. Sumner, William Sumner
American sociologist (1840–1910)
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1840-10-30 ) October 30, 1840, Paterson, New Jersey , U.S.
- Died
- April 12, 1910 (1910-04-12) (aged 69), Englewood, New Jersey , U.S.
- Education
- Yale University , University of Geneva , University of Göttingen , University of Oxford
- Occupations
- Social scientist , Episcopal priest
- Employer
- Yale University
- Notable work
- What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883) Folkways (1906)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- William
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Paterson
- Place of death
- Englewood
- Occupation
- economist
- Educated at
- Yale College
- Employer
- Yale University
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Doctoral student
- Thorstein Veblen
- Image
- William Graham Sumner.png
Show 8 more facts
- date of birth
- 1840-10-30
- date of death
- 1910-04-12
- member of
- Phi Beta Kappa Society
- Commons category
- William Graham Sumner
- writing language
- English language
- name in native language
- William Graham Sumner
- contributed to creative work
- Popular Science
- interested in
- sociology
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
William Graham Sumner (October 30, 1840 – April 12, 1910) was an American Episcopal priest, social scientist, and neoclassical liberal. He taught social sciences at Yale University, where he held the nation's first professorship in sociology and became one of the most influential teachers at any major school.
Sumner wrote extensively on the social sciences, penning numerous books and essays on ethics, American history, economic history, political theory, sociology, and anthropology. He supported laissez-faire economics, free markets, and the gold standard, in addition to coining the term "ethnocentrism" to identify the roots of imperialism, which he strongly opposed. As a spokesman against elitism, he was in favor of the "forgotten man" of the middle class—a term he coined. He had a prolonged influence on American conservatism.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “William Graham Sumner” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.