Ellsworth Faris

Ellsworth Faris (1874 to 1953) was an influential sociologist of the Chicago school, born in Salem, Tennessee. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Texas Christian University, spent 1897 to 1904 as a missionary in the Belgian Congo, and on his return took his Ph.D. under George Herbert Mead at the University of Chicago, where he was then hired into the department. He became chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Chicago and was president of the American Sociological Society in 1937, the year he published The Nature of Human Nature. Herbert Blumer was his doctoral student. He died in Lake Forest, Illinois, and was the father, grandfather and great grandfather of sociologists.