Frank W. Blackmar

Frank Wilson Blackmar (1854 to 1931) was an American sociologist, historian and educator who served as the ninth president of the American Sociological Society, now the American Sociological Association. Born in Springfield Township, Erie County, Pennsylvania, he was a professor of mathematics at the University of the Pacific from 1881 to 1886 and took his doctorate at the Johns Hopkins University in 1889. He then became professor of history and sociology at the University of Kansas, and ten years later professor of sociology and economics there, and in 1896 he was elected dean when its graduate school was organized. He was active in the university extension movement across the western United States and wrote several books of local history, handbooks of economics and political pamphlets, including Spanish Colonization of the Southwest, The Story of Human Progress, Elements of Sociology and Justifiable Individualism. In 1915 he co-authored with John L. Gillin Outlines of Sociology, described as the first widely used introductory text in the field. He died in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1931.