Ward, Lester Frank

Ward, Lester Frank

(1841–1913) sociologist, geologist; born in Joliet, Ill. Raised on the frontier, he briefly attended the Susquehanna Collegiate Institute in Towanda, Pa., before serving in the Union army during the Civil War (1862–64). While working for the United States Treasury Department (1865–81), he earned three degrees at Columbian College (now George Washington University); he then worked for the United States Geological Survey (1881–1905) as a geologist, biologist, and paleontologist. While working as a scientist, he was caught up in the current debate over evolution and the conflict between science and religion; increasingly more concerned with social issues, in 1883 he published Dynamic Sociology, the first of his several once influential texts on sociology. He spent his final years as a professor of sociology at Brown University (1906–13). Liberal, humanitarian, and democratic in his ideals, he saw education, economics, and government actions as the key to most of society's problems. His six-volume "mental autobiography," Glimpses of the Cosmos, was published posthumously (1913–18).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.