In Memory of George Psathas

We mourn the passing of George Psathas, which occurred on November 15, 2018. He was professor of Sociology at Boston University until his retirement in 1997. George Psathas was born in 1929 in New Haven, Connecticut. He received his B.A. at Yale University in 1950, his M.A. at the University of Michigan in 1951 and his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1956. From 1963 to 1968 he was Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. George Psathas is the co-founder of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS) as well as founding editor of Human Studies. A Journal for Philosophy and the Social Sciences. He was Honorary President of the International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. It was his achievement to introduce the paradigm of Phenomenological Sociology in to US American sociological thought, following specifically the works of Alfred Schütz and Harold Garfinkel. He also made a special contribution to the promotion of ethnomethodology. We keep George Psathas in memory as an outstanding sociologist and ethnomethodologist.

Jochen Dreher