Printer Friendly Version Of American Sociological Association:
William I. Thomas William Isaac Thomas August 13, 1863 —
December 5, 1947 William I. Thomas served as President of the
American Sociological Society (later changed to Association) in
1927. His Presidential address delivered at the 1927 Annual
Meeting was entitled "The Behavior Pattern and the Situation".
In his 1951 book, American Sociology: The Story of Sociology in
the United States through 1950, Howard W. Odum provided the
following biographical sketch of William I. Thomas (pages
141-144): With F. H. Giddings, E. A. Ross, C. H. Cooley, C. A.
Ellwood, and Ellsworth Faris, W. I. Thomas, the seventeenth
president of the American Sociological Society in 1927, belonged
to what was often called the earlier psychological school of
sociologists. Faris received his Ph.D. degree at the University
of Chicago in psychology. Ross's Social Psychology was the first
text published anywhere under that title. Cooley has been
commonly credited with much of the be