Ward, Lester Frank (1841–1913)

Lester Frank Ward, a man of modest origins born in Joliet, Illinois, was a major architect of American sociology. Prior to his election to the first presidency (1906–1907) of the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association), academic sociology in the United States had no independent national disciplinary organization save the unifying voice of the American Journal of Sociology , then edited by Albion W. Small at the University of Chicago. Under Lester Ward's pioneering and able leadership, the American Sociological Society catapulted sociology into the American intellectual and academic mainstream.