Lazarsfeld, Paul

Lazarsfeld, Paul (Felix) (1901–76) sociologist; born in Vienna, Austria. He studied mathematics, law, and social psychology at the University of Vienna, where he established a social psychology research center before emigrating to the U.S.A. in 1933. At Columbia University (1940–69) he founded (1945) the Bureau of Applied Social Research. He later taught at the University of Pittsburgh (1970–76). A quantitative methodologist, he was an early researcher of the listening habits of radio audiences and of American popular culture. He became a leading authority on the mass media and voting patterns; the latter work formed the basis of modern voting projection techniques. He devised Latent Structure Analysis, a mathematical technique used in sociological analysis. His books include several regarded as classics: The Unemployed of Marienthal (1933), The People's Choice (1944), and Voting (1954).