Paul Lazarsfeld

Paul Lazarsfeld

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (February 13, 1901 – August 30, 1976) was one of the major figures in 20th-century American sociology. The founder of Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, he exerted a tremendous influence over the techniques and the organization of social research. "It is not so much that he was an American sociologist," one colleague said of him after his death, "as it was that he determined what American sociology would be."