Life and Work of Paul M. Neurath

The project is planned to lead to the first scientific biography of Paul M. Neurath. It will give a full account of his scientific life, the intellectual nature of his ideas, the people and institutions he was related to, and of his role as a teacher. The material basis for that purpose is his scientific and literary bequest given to the "Paul F. Lazarsfeld Archive" at the Institute of Sociology, University of Vienna, in 2002. The relevance of PMNs scientific work refers to special fields of investigation, as for instance, world population growth and migration, nutrition of world population, history of sociology and social research (with a special emphasis on Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Otto Neurath), early history of demography, popularisation of science, and teaching of methods of social research. What can be expected from such a biography is, in more general terms, besides the mans life history, a deeper understanding of the context, within which migration and remigration has taken place for many in the totalitarian times; a clearer basis on which the hypothesis of the so called "import of American social research to Europe" can be discussed and possibly refused, and insights into the way how a scholar of wide experience tried to match an American college tradition with a European university culture in order to make it fruitful for the students in Vienna and in other parts of Europe. Regarded under more topic-related perspectives the biography can bridge the gap between Otto Neuraths "Empirische Soziologie" and the way how quantitative and qualitative methods developed in Europe and in the United States (a proposal made by Prof. Hung-Tak Lee, a scholar of PMN who has initiated the translation of "Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal" into Korean language), it can provide a living memory of concentration camps beyond what has already been laid down by PMN himself in his dissertation, and it can contribute to an understanding of how formerly innovative and interdisciplinary sights in social research have partly come down to today`s "research industry".

The project is planned to lead to the first scientific biography of Paul M. Neurath. It will give a full account of his scientific life, the intellectual nature of his ideas, the people and institutions he was related to, and of his role as a teacher. The material basis for that purpose is his scientific and literary bequest given to the "Paul F. Lazarsfeld Archive" at the Institute of Sociology, University of Vienna, in 2002. The relevance of PMN`s scientific work refers to special fields of investigation, as for instance, world population growth and migration, nutrition of world population, history of sociology and social research (with a special emphasis on Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Otto Neurath), early history of demography, popularisation of science, and teaching of methods of social research. What can be expected from such a biography is, in more general terms, besides the man`s life history, a deeper understanding of the context, within which migration and remigration has taken place for many in the totalitarian times; a clearer basis on which the hypothesis of the so called "import of American social research to Europe" can be discussed and possibly refused, and insights into the way how a scholar of wide experience tried to match an American college tradition with a European university culture in order to make it fruitful for the students in Vienna and in other parts of Europe. Regarded under more topic-related perspectives the biography can bridge the gap between Otto Neurath`s "Empirische Soziologie" and the way how quantitative and qualitative methods developed in Europe and in the United States (a proposal made by Prof. Hung-Tak Lee, a scholar of PMN who has initiated the translation of "Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal" into Korean language), it can provide a living memory of concentration camps beyond what has already been laid down by PMN himself in his dissertation, and it can contribute to an understanding of how formerly innovative and interdisciplinary sights in social research have partly come down to today`s "research industry".