Frederic Thrasher

Frederic Milton Thrasher (1892 to 1962) was a sociologist at the University of Chicago and one of the most prominent members of the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s, a colleague of Robert E. Park. Born in Shelbyville, Indiana, he graduated from DePauw University in 1916, took a master's degree at Chicago in 1918 with a thesis on the Boy Scout movement as a socializing agency, and a doctorate there in 1926 on gangs. His best known work, The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago, appeared in 1927 and argued that neighborhoods in transition are breeding grounds for gangs; it was one of a series of outstanding doctoral studies completed under Park's direction in the golden era of the Chicago department. In the 1930s he moved to New York University, where he became professor of educational sociology, retiring in 1959, and began a media studies programme on the effects of motion pictures on children. He also served as a consultant to groups concerned with motion pictures, crime, prison reform and the prevention of juvenile delinquency.