Melvin Lester Kohn

Professor Melvin L. Kohn is the Professor Emeritus of Sociology at John Hopkins University. Prior to his work at JHU, Kohn conducted research in the Laboratory of Socio-environmental Studies of the National Institute of Mental Health from 1952 to 1985, serving as chief of that laboratory from 1960 on. His research has always been in the field of social structure and personality. In recent years, this work has been almost entirely comparative and collaborative - initially, comparing the United States to Italy, later and much more intensively, comparing the United States to Poland and Japan. His current research focuses on social structure and personality under conditions of radical social change - a comparative study of Poland and Ukraine, which he is doing in collaboration with sociologists in those countries. Kohn is a past-president of the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, and the Sociological Research Association, and a former member of the executive committee of the International Sociological Association. He is an honorary foreign member of the Polish Sociological Association, and is or has been a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Guggenheim Foundation.