George Andrew Lundberg
George Andrew LundbergOctober 3, 1895 – April 14, 1966
George Andrew Lundberg was born on October 3, 1895 in Fairdale, North Dakota. His parents, Andrew J Lundberg and Britta C. Erickson, were recent immigrants from Sweden. Robert E. L. Faris later wrote that Lundberg “had his first eight years of education in a one-room school house. At the age of sixteen he became a public school teacher, also in a one-room school only three miles from his birthplace.”
Lundberg pursued higher education, first at the University of North Dakota, where he graduated in 1920. Following college he spent a few years teaching in North Dakota schools. Eventually he enrolled in the University of Minnesota where he studied with sociology giants Luther Lee Bernard and F. S. Chapin. Lundberg earned his PhD in 1925 and then went on to teach, spending the most time at the University of Washington where he eventually served as department chair until his retirement in 1963.
Lundberg served at the 33rd President of the American Sociological Society (name later changed to Association). His Presidential Address, “Sociologists and the Peace,” was delivered at the organization’s annual meeting in New York City in December 1943.
He died unexpectedly on April 14, 1966 in Seattle, Washington. Upon his death, an obituary authored by his colleague Robert E. L. Faris was published in the August 1966 issue of The American Sociologist.
Obituary
Written by Robert E. L. Faris, published in The American Sociologist, 1(4):212-213.
George Lundberg, the thirty-third president of the American Sociological Association died in Seattle April 14, 1966, following surgical treatment of a condition not ordinarily considered dangerous.
Lundberg was born in Fairdale, North Dakota, of Swedish immigrant parents, and had his first eight years of education in a one-room school house. At the age of sixteen he became a public school teacher, also in a oneroom school only three miles from his birthplace. With some difficulty, arising from lack of a high school diploma, he eventually entered the University of North Dakota, graduating in 1920 and for a few years continued to teach in North Dakota schools, as well as in Methodist and Presbyterian Sunday schools. He is also reported as having played violin in a dance band on Saturday nights.
Lundberg was first exposed to sociology by John M. Gillette of North Dakota, and later in summer study at Wisconsin by E. A. Ross. He went on to the pursuit of graduate studies at Minnesota where he was taught by L. L. Bernard and F. S. Chapin, and so had the benefit of instruction and inspiration from four scholars who had been or were to become presidents of the American Sociological Association.
After achieving the Ph.D., U. of Minnesota, 1925; Columbia University, 1927, he taught successively at the University of Washington, Wells College, University of Pittsburgh, Columbia University, Bennington College, and finally in 1945 back at the University of Washington, where he served as chairman. After quickly and effectively building up the graduate training and research activity in the department, he retired from the chairmanship in 1953, hut continued teaching and writing. In 1958 he received a LL.D. from University of North Dakota. In 1961 he became Professor Emeritus (by his own choice), hut continued to occupy an office in the department and to write and edit a paperback series up to his final year.
Along the course of this career Lundberg grew steadily in influence and prominence, and received abundant recognition. He served as president of the Eastern Sociological Society, the Pacific Sociological Society, and the Sociological Research Association. From 1941 to 1947 he served as editor of Sociometry. In 1945 he was invited to the University of Washington to deliver the Walker-Ames lectures. In 1951 the University of Minnesota awarded him its Distinguished Achievement Medal, with the citation “Pioneer in Applying Scientific Method to Sociology.” The University of North Dakota conferred on him the LL.D. in 1958.
Lundberg’s bibliography includes seven hooks, four chapters in hooks, and seventy articles. His Social Research, first published in 1929 and revised in 1942, also published in Spanish and Japanese editions, was an important early text in research methods, setting a pattern for several later texts and defining the nature of the research equipment needed by productive scientific sociologists. His Foundations of Sociology, published in 1939 and reprinted in abridged form in 1964, and Sociology, 1954, 1958, 1963, (in collaboration with C. C. Schrag and O. N. Larsen) presented his conception of the content of the field of sociology.
It would he the opinion of many sociologists, however, that the major life achievement of George Lundberg was his continuous and successful battle to persuade sociologists to become scientific and to persuade the educated public that a scientific sociology is possible. This effort was vigorously conducted in speeches, articles, and conversations during his entire career. The argument is well summarized in his 1947 book Can Science Save Us which was revised in 1961, and published in Swedish and Danish editions in 1952 and 1965 respectively. Lundberg, of course, was not alone in this effort-his teacher F. S. Chapin for one having fought the same battle, and many others as well, but no other sociologist of his time hammered on the same topic so persistently and effectively in the face of deprecation, misinterpretations, and even some hostility. Lundberg lived to see the effort culminate in a success hard to foresee in 1925, when in the 1960’s support for sociological research became a matter-of-fact responsibility of the National Science Foundation.
He did not propose that concepts and methods be indiscriminately borrowed from physics and chemistry in order to make sociology scientific. “By science,” once said Lundberg, “we mean that we seek some means of knowing whether what we are saying is true.” The emphasis, of course, was on appropriate methods of testing general statements regarding causation, although he had some aversion to the word “cause,” preferring in recent years to speak of “if … then” statements.
Vigorous argument can bring penalties, and Lundberg cheerfully accepted the unpleasant consequences. He knew, even as he uttered truth as he saw it, that unwarranted extensions of his position would he made. His presidential address may have been the only one in the history of the A.S.A. in which hisses broke in on the speaker. He later wrote, “I certainly don’t blame the small group in my audience for their agitation. At the same time, I felt I should take the occasion to remind my colleagues that for the scientist it is a mistaken kindness, not to say a gross immorality, to fail to report what we know or believe to be the facts.”
Lundberg’s friendships were never controlled by doctrinal tendencies. Lundberg was a warm person, and kept on the best of terms with persons who held great objection to his views. He entertained frequently and well, and produced much good conversation. He enjoyed music, art, drama, architecture, and spent much of his leisure in the company of persons accomplished in these fields. For some years he occupied a daringly modernistic house in the city, and, in vacations, a contrastingly modest and conventional island farm house, where he cultivated vegetables and picked fruits to put on his own table, and to help feed parties of up to eighty guests at a time.
Lundberg convinced his friends that it is possible to be entirely contented as a bachelor. He showed also after his marriage to Sylvia Kjeldstad in 1956, that he could also enjoy being a husband, and in time, a father to his son George Andrew Lundberg, Jr.
The influence of Lundberg at the University of Washington also has been misunderstood. While one of his first actions was to bring S. C. Dodd to the department, to organize a Public Opinion Laboratory and build an active research tradition in the department, there was never a trace of an effort to maintain a Lundbergian doctrine of sociological content or theory. Faculty members were added on the basis of general competence and research promise, regardless of particular sociological viewpoint. Graduate students were not expected to carry forth a set of official truths, but were advised to find their own by means of sound method. This too, he saw occurring in ample measure, during the good years of his retirement.
