John H. Goldthorpe is Official Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy, a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

• Introduction; 1. The Beginnings: Graunt and Halley; 2. Quetelet and his Critics; 3. The English Statisticians: Galton, Pearson and Yule: Appendix: The English Statisticians and the Cambridge Economists; 4. The Sample Survey Specialists: Kiaer, Bowley and Neyman; 5. Weber and the Concept of Action; 6. From Columbia to Chicago: Ogburn and Sociology as Science; 7. From Chicago back to Columbia: Stouffer, Lazarsfeld and Merton: Appendix: The Missing Link? – Karl Popper; 8. Duncan and Sociology as a Population Science; 9. The Return to the Concept of Action and Micro-Macro Relations: Coleman and Boudon; 10. Conclusion: Progress and Prospects.

'John Goldthorpe's earlier work such as On Sociology and Sociology as a Population Science has contributed in lucid and seminal ways to the integration of empirical research and theory formation in sociology, convincingly showing, too, that sociological theory, adequately conceived, differs very much from second-hand history of ideas. His new book Pioneers of Sociological Science, provocative and vintage Goldthorpe in its clarity, is a major contribution to the genealogy of sociology as a population science. Providing a critical account of the ideas of pioneers, the book shows how core principles of sociology as an empirically and theoretically informed discipline have been shaped.' Werner Raub, Professor of Sociology, Utrecht University