A. James Gregor - Early Life

Early Life

He was born Anthony Gimigliano in New York City. His father, Antonio, was a machine operator, factory worker and anarchist. During World War II, his mother, an Italian citizen who had never taken American citizenship, was classified as an "enemy alien".

Gregor graduated from Columbia University in 1952 and thereafter served as a high school social science teacher. During this period, he commenced publishing articles in political journals on both the "Right" (The European) and the "Left" (Science and Society and Studies on the Left). In 1958, his writing appeared in an academic journal for the first time with "The Logic of Race Classification" published in Genus, a journal edited by Corrado Gini, a leading Italian sociologist. Gregor's article was a defense of Gini's theories and he subsequently became a friend and collaborator of Gini's until Gini's death in 1965.

Gregor returned to Columbia for post-graduate work in the late 1950s.