A native of
Brooklyn, he was educated at
Thomas Jefferson High School and
Brooklyn College. After earning his
doctoral degree in sociology at
Harvard University in the 1950s, where he had been taught by
Talcott Parsons, he established a theoretical and experimental research program at Stanford. The program,
expectation states theory, has many branches and through his mentorship of generations of
graduate students, this program has been a unique example of the growth of knowledge in sociology through chains of theory development accompanied by experimental tests and refinements. His expertise was in the area of status processes and status relations among members of different groups, processes of legitimation, reward expectations and
distributive justice, and theory construction in the
behavioral sciences. His later research focused on gender relations in interpersonal settings, status characteristics theory, and cumulative theory in
social science. Berger, along with collaborators, edited a large number of books to which invited scholars have contributed papers that elaborate upon one or another "
sociological theory in progress." Berger was a recipient of the Cooley-Mead Award from the
American Sociological Association to honor long-term distinguished contributions to the intellectual and scientific advancement of
social psychology. In 2007, he received the
W. E. B. Du Bois Award for his contributions to the field of sociology. Berger died on December 24, 2023, at the age of 99. His death was announced in April 2024. == Bibliography ==