Albion Woodbury Small

Who was Albion Woodbury Small?

Albion Woodbury Small founded the first Department of Sociology in the United States at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois in 1892. He was influential on the establishment of sociology as a valid field of academic study.

Small was born in Buckfield, Maine and grew up in Bangor, Maine. He studied theology from 1876 to 1879 at the Andover Newton Theological School. From 1879 to 1881 he studied at the University of Leipzig and the University of Berlin in Germany history, social economics and politics.

From 1888 to 1889 he studied history at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and was promoted in 1889 with a Ph.D. thesis at the same time continuing to teach at Colby College. From 1889-1892 he was the president of Colby.

In 1892 he founded the first Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He chaired this department for over 30 years. In 1894 he, along with George E. Vincent, published the first textbook in sociology: An introduction to the study of society. In 1895 he established the American Journal of Sociology. From 1905 to 1925 he served as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature at the University of Chicago.