Personal History
Blumer was born March 7, 1900 in St. Louis, Missouri. He grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, with his parents and attended Webster Groves High School and later the University of Missouri from 1918 to 1922. After graduation, he secured a teaching position there, but in 1925 he relocated to the University of Chicago where he was greatly influenced by the social psychologist George Herbert Mead, and sociologists W. I. Thomas and Robert Park. Upon completing his doctorate in 1928, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Chicago, where he continued his own research and the work of Mead.
Blumer was the secretary treasurer of the American Sociological Association from 1930–1935, and was the editor of the American Journal of Sociology from 1941-1952. In 1952, he moved from the University of Chicago, and presided and developed the newly-formed Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1952, he became the president of the American Sociological Association, and he received the association's award for a Career of Distinguished Scholarship in 1983. Blumer served as the 46th president of the American Sociological Association and his Presidential Address was his paper "Sociological Analysis and the 'Variable'". Herbert Blumer died on April 13, 1987.
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