컬럼비아대학 사회과학 담당 로버트 머튼 교수. 1972년 파리대학 철학박사 학위.
파리대학·오슬로대학·시카고대학에서 강의했다.
주요 연구 분야는 합리적 선택이론, 분배정의 이론, 사회사상사(막스와 토크빌). 주요 저서는 Ulysses and the Sirens(1979), Sour Grapes(1983), Making Sense of Marx(1985), The Cement of Society(1989), Solomonic Judg- ments(1989), Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences(1989), Local Jus- tice(1992), Political Psychology(1993), Strong Feelings(1999), Alchemies of the Mind(1999), and Ulysses Unbound(2000), Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences (2007; revised ed. 2015), Reason and Rationality (2009), Alexis de Tocqueville: The First Social Scientist (2009), Le desinteressement (2009), L'irrationalite (2010), Securities against Misrule. Juries, Assemblies, Elections (2013), Constituent Assemblies (edited with Roberto Gargarella, Vatsal Naresh and Bjørn Erik Rasch; 2019), France before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime (2020)