Sumner, William Graham (1840–1910)

US sociologist and educator. In 1872 he accepted a professorship in political and social science at Yale, a post he held until his death. He was an influential teacher, famed for his independent thought, innovative classes, and rigorous standards., He was a man of strong moral convictions and opposed all forms of shoddy thinking. A man of immense energies, he worked in particular to improve Connecticut's public education.

He was born in Paterson, New Jersey. Son of an immigrant English workman who read and thought about social and economic issues, he took a BA from Yale in 1863 and then went to Europe to study for the ministry. In 1869 he was ordained as a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church and by 1870 he was rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Morristown, New Jersey. He is usually labeled a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism. He saw all aspects of society as interrelated and as he worked on what was to be his major book, he became sidetracked on a supporting study of the underlying customs of societies through the ages; he published this as Folkways (1907). His major work, Science of Society, came out in four volumes posthumously in 1927, heavily edited by Yale professor Albert G Keller. In his day he was also widely known for his lively essays and public lectures, perhaps the most notable being one called ‘The Forgotten Man’, what a later generation would call ‘the silent majority’ of average people who ‘are never mentioned in the newspapers, but just work and save and pay’.