I'm a sociologist interested in the organization of work, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of research, and related areas (especially history and philosophy of science).
Mostly, I concentrate on the history of evolutionary biology and natural history, on computing work, and on research methods-- but I wander into other topics a lot. I'm very much of the Chicago school of sociology, and a Pragmatist philosophically.
Currently, I'm finishing a book on the institutional history of American evolutionary biology. I'm also working on the history of natural history, considered as one of several different modes of research. I'm thinking very hard about the organization of interacting tasks across multiple organizations. And I'm thirty years into a project to think through what good software to support qualitative research would look like.
BA, Queens College (CUNY), 1964; MA, Sociology, Chicago, 1966; PhD, Sociology, Chicago, 1998 (long story, that).
Taught at Syracuse and UC San Francisco for a few years, then consulted. Since 1981, I've been director of the Tremont Research Institute in San Francisco, a non-profit devoted to social science research. Lately, there's no one here but me.