Garfinkel, Harold

Garfinkel, Harold (1917–  ) sociologist; born in Newark, N.J. He took his B.A. from the University College: Newark (a part of Rutgers) and his M.A. at the University of North Carolina (1942). After serving with the U.S. Army in World War II, he took his Ph.D. from Harvard (1952). He taught at several universities but spent most of his career at the University of California: Los Angeles (1954–87); he was affiliated with the U.S. Public Health Service (1957–66). In works such as Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967), he pioneered the now internationally influential field of ethnomethodology, the study of methods used by ordinary people to describe and analyze their own activities.