Ernest Watson Burgess was an urban sociologist born in Tilbury, Ontario

Tilbury, Ontario

Tilbury is a community in the municipality of Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada. It is located between Chatham and Windsor on Highway 401.-History:...

. He was educated at Kingfisher College

Kingfisher College

-Bringing a College to Kingfisher:Founded by the Rev. Joseph Homer Parker, a Congregationalist Minister who had founded many Congregationalist churches in Canada and the Northeast U.S., and who had also founded the predecessor institution to Wichita State University...

 in Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

 and continued graduate studies in sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 at the University of Chicago. In 1916, he returned to the University of Chicago, as a faculty

Faculty (university)

A faculty is a division within a university comprising one subject area, or a number of related subject areas...

 member. Burgess was hired as an urban sociologist

Urban sociology

Urban sociology is the sociological study of social life and human interaction in metropolitan areas. It is a normative discipline of sociology seeking to study the structures, processes, changes and problems of an urban area and by doing so providing inputs for planning and policy making. Like...

 at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. Burgess also served as the 24th President of the American Sociological Association

American Sociological Association

The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...

 (ASA).

Research

Five years after his arrival as a professor at the University of a Chicago in 1921, Ernest Burgess would publish one of his most celebrated works. He collaborated with sociologist Robert Park to write a textbook called Introduction to the Science of Sociology. This was one of the most influential sociology texts ever written. Many people at the time referred to this book as the “Bible of Sociology”. This book represented the observation and reflection of men who have seen life from very different points of view. The book discussed many topics such as the history of sociology, human nature, investigating problems, social interaction, competition, conflicts, assimilation and more. Introduction to the Science of Sociology was so well organized and comprehensive that most graduate students taught by University of Chicago alumni were required to read it. This book was so informative that it was still being used decades after the death of Ernest Burgess.

Burgess' groundbreaking research, in conjunction with his colleague, Robert E. Park

Robert E. Park

Robert Ezra Park was an American urban sociologist, one of the main founders of the original Chicago School of sociology.-Life:...

, provided the foundation for The Chicago School

Chicago school (sociology)

In sociology and later criminology, the Chicago School was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specialising in urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, now applied elsewhere...

. In The City, they conceptualized the city

City

A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...

 into the concentric zones (Concentric zone model

Concentric zone model

The Concentric zone model also known as the Burgess model is one of the earliest theoretical models to explain urban social structures. It was created by sociologist Ernest Burgess in 1924. -The model:...

), including the central business district

Central business district

A central business district is the commercial and often geographic heart of a city. In North America this part of a city is commonly referred to as "downtown" or "city center"...

, transitional (industrial, deteriorating housing), working-class residential (tenements), residential, and commuter/suburb

Suburb

The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

an zones. They also viewed cities as something that experiences evolution and change, in the Darwinian

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

sense.

Ernest Burgess also spent a considerable amount of time studying the institutions of family and marriage. He was interested in developing a scientific measure that would predict a success rate in marriage. In his book Predicting Success or Failure in Marriage, which he wrote with Leonard Cottrell in 1939, he theorized that harmony in marriage requires a certain amount of adjustment in attitudes and social behavior by both the husband and the wife. Burgess and Cottrell developed a chart made for predicting marital success. In this chart they associated many different variables that they claimed affect stability in marriage. Burgess and Cottrell were however, often criticized for this work, since they attempted to measure marriage without actually including any component of love or affection. This is something that most people would say is the most important part of marriage. Notably, Ernest Burgess was never married.

Ernest Burgess also studied elderly people, especially the effects of retirement. This was something that was very neglected at that point in time. He collaborated with the government in researching the success of government programs for the elderly, the results of which were published in nineteen sixty in the book Aging in Western Societies. Ernest Burgess served as the editor for this book. This book was the third volume in a three part series of handbooks written by the Inter-University Training Institute in Social Gerontology. Ernest Burgess was also involved with first and largest volume of the series. This volume dealt with comparative data and trends on subjects such as population structure, employment, retirement, income, housing and medical insurance. The second volume was made up of case studies from European countries and touched on such topics as housing, family relations, and senior centers. The third volume presented a statistical supplement of comparative data on conditions in different countries. The other five countries used are France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, and West Germany. These countries were selected because they were closest in social structure and culture to the United States. This was done so that the background experience of other societies could be used to better the understand aging in the United States. Although Burgess did not write much of this book he certainly left his mark serving as the editor and writing the introduction.

Accomplishments

• President of Behavior Research Foundation (1931)
• President of American Sociological Society (1934)
• President of Sociological Research Association (1942)
• President of National Conference On Family Relations (1942)
• Chair of Sociology Department/ University of Chicago (1946)

External links

• Biography - American Sociological Association