Wilbert E. Moore

Wilbert Ellis Moore ( born October 26, 1914 in Elma, † 29 December 1987) was an American sociologist and 56th president of the American Sociological Association.

Moore studied at Harvard University and was there with Kingsley Davis and Robert King Merton of the first graduate students of Talcott Parsons. Moore was born in 1951 professor of sociology at Princeton University and joined in the 1960s at the University of Denver, where he taught until his retirement.

Already in 1945 he developed together with Kingsley Davis named after them Davis -Moore hypothesis of the social structure, according to which certain positions in any society are functionally more important than others and require special skills for which only a limited number of individuals is gifted.

Writings in German translation

• Structural transformation of society (From the American translated by Wolfgang Schoene ), 3rd edition, Munich: Jventa -Verlag, 1973, ISBN 3-7799-0108-0 (1st edition 1967, 2nd edition 1968).