Eisenstadt, S. N. 1923-2010

Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt (Hebrew: שמואל נח אייזנשטדט‎ 10 September 1923 – 2 September 2010) was an Israeli sociologist and writer. In 1959 he was appointed to a teaching post in the sociology department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From 1990 until his death in September 2010 he was professor emeritus. He held countless guest professorships, at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, the University of Zurich, the University of Vienna, the University of Bern, Stanford and the University of Heidelberg, among others. Eisenstadt received a number of prizes, including the Balzan Prize and the Max-Planck research prize. He was also the 2006 winner of the Holberg International Memorial Prize. He was a member of many academies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Advisory Editors Council of the Social Evolution & History Journal. His daughter Irit Meir was a noted scholar of Israeli sign language. In the field of sociology he became known as a "sociologist of youth" (after a term in From Generation to Generation, a work closely related to the ideas of Talcott Parsons). However: Eisenstadt's research contributed considerably to the understanding that the modern trend of a eurocentric interpretation of the cultural program developed in the west is a natural development model seen in all societies ... the European model is not the only one: it was merely the earliest. It started the trend. But social reactions, whether in the USA, Canada, Japan or in Southeast Asia took place with completely different cultural reagents. (Frankfurter Rundschau, March 22, 2000)