Inkeles, Alex, 1920-....

Educator, sociologist.

American sociologist.

Biographical/Historical Note

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Inkeles received an A.B. degree in 1941 and an A.M. in 1946 from Cornell University. He received a Ph.D. in 1949 from Columbia University, publishing Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion in 1950.

A professor of sociology at Harvard University from 1957 to 1971, he published What Is Sociology? in 1964 and Social Change in Soviet Russia in 1968.

From 1972 on, Inkeles was a professor of sociology at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Inkeles was an expert on political behavior, modernization, social psychology, and national character. His research focused on the social structure of an emerging worldwide society and cross-national comparative studies. Inkeles published Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries in 1974 and Exploring Individual Modernity in 1983.

Inkeles has held numerous fellowships including the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California from 1955 to 1956 a Guggenheim fellowship for study in Israel and the United Kingdom from 1977 to 1978, and a National Academy of Sciences fellowship in 1992. He was also a Fulbright scholar in Greece in 1977 and in Chile in 1985.

He was elected to three of the most distinguished honorary societies in America: the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1962, the American Philosophical Society in 1972, and the National Academy of Sciences in 1981.

Alex Inkeles passed away on July 9, 2010.

Sources: "Alex Inkeles, Senior Fellow" Hoover Institution. http://www.hoover.org/fellows/9793 Accessed January 6, 2012