Barry Wellman - Early Life

Early Life

Barry Wellman was born and raised in the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road area of the Bronx, New York City. He attended P.S. 33 and Creston J.H.S. 79, and was a teenage member of the Fordham Flames. He gained his high school degree from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959. He received his A.B. (Bachelor's) degree magna cum laude from Lafayette College in 1963, majoring in social history and winning prizes in both history and religious studies. At Lafayette, he was a member of the McKelvy Honors House and captained the undefeated 1962 College Bowl team, whose final victory was over Berkeley.

His graduate work was at Harvard University, where he trained with Chad Gordon, Charles Tilly and Harrison White, and also studied with Roger Brown, George Homans, Alex Inkeles, Florence Kluckhohn, Talcott Parsons and Phillip J. Stone. He received a M.A. in Social Relations in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1969. His focus was on community, computer applications, social networks and self-conception, and his dissertation showed that the social identities of African-American and White American Pittsburgh junior high school students were related to the extent of segregation of their schools.

He has been married since 1965 to Beverly Wellman, a researcher in complementary and alternative medicine.

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