George Caspar Homans (1910-1989)

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was educated at St. Paul's School, New Hampshire, and Harvard University. Through his mother, he was a direct descendant of both U.S. President John Adams and John Quincy Adams. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve in command of small ships engaged in anti-submarine warfare and escorting convoys. Having become a Harvard faculty member in 1939, he resumed his career after the war teaching sociology and medieval history. From 1953, he became a full Professor of Sociology and was visiting Professor at the Universities of Manchester, Cambridge and Kent in the UK. Returning to Harvard, he was elected President of the American Sociological Association (1964). He is best known for his work on Exchange Theory and social behaviour. He was described by Professor Charles Tilly as, "a vivifier, a life-giver". He and his cousin, Tom Boylston Adams (both great-grandsons of Charles Francis Adams), were filmed in 1985 in the Boston Athenaeum Club taking part in an entertaining conversation that depicts the, "rare and declining upper-class American accent belonging to the legendary Boston Brahmins". In 1941, he married Nancy Parshall Cooper and they were the parents of three children.