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Erving GoffmanAmerican sociologist of Canadian descent
Date of Birth: 11.06.1922
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Biography of Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman was an American sociologist of Canadian origin. He was born on June 11, 1922, in Mannville, Alberta, Canada, to a family of Ukrainian Jews who had migrated to Canada at the beginning of the 20th century. Goffman's father ran a successful tailoring business in Dauphin, Manitoba. His older sister, Frances Bay, was an actress.

Goffman completed his high school education at St. John's Technical High School in Winnipeg. He initially pursued a degree in chemistry at the University of Manitoba during the first year of World War II. However, he left his studies to work at the National Film Board of Canada in Ottawa, which was founded by British documentarian John Grierson. It was during this time that Goffman developed an interest in sociology and began meeting with future renowned North American sociologist Dennis Wrong. These encounters served as a catalyst for Goffman to leave the University of Manitoba and transfer to the University of Toronto, where he graduated in 1945 with a bachelor's degree in sociology and anthropology.
Shortly after, Goffman enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he obtained his master's degree in sociology in 1949. In 1953, he defended his doctoral dissertation, which he spent a year researching on one of the Shetland Islands, studying an isolated local community. From 1952 to 1954, Goffman worked as a junior faculty member in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He then served as a research fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1954 to 1957. In 1958, Goffman joined the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked as an assistant professor for a year and became a professor of sociology in 1962, holding the position until 1968.
Goffman later relocated to Philadelphia and became a professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania from 1969 to 1982. Throughout his career, Goffman made significant contributions to social theory, particularly in the study of symbolic interaction through a dramaturgical perspective. His seminal book, "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life," published in 1959, laid the foundation for this perspective.
Goffman received numerous prestigious awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977-1978 and the MacIver Award from the American Sociological Association in 1961. In 2007, he was ranked sixth in "The Times Higher Education Guide's" list of the most cited scholars in the humanities and social sciences, behind Anthony Giddens but ahead of Jürgen Habermas.
Goffman was married twice and had a son and a daughter. His first wife, a psychologist, tragically took her own life. He passed away on November 19, 1982, at the age of 60, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after battling stomach cancer.