Kingsley Davis
Stanford University
August 20, 1908 - February 27, 1997
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Scientific Discipline: Social and Political Sciences Membership Type:
Emeritus
(elected 1966)
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Kingsley Davis was a distinguished sociologist best known for his work with family relationships and demography. He contributed significantly to the field of sociology through his exploration of social organization and male sexual jealousy. Davis is most often cited for his unique sociological approach to demography. He advocated for “zero population growth,” and his work is credited as one of the main reasons behind the increase of contraceptive use in some parts of the developing world.
Davis graduated from the University of Texas in 1930 and earned his PhD is sociology from Harvard University in 1933. Though he had a long academic career with positions at a variety of institutions, Davis is famous for his twenty-two-year tenure at the University of California, Berkeley, where he assumed chairmanship of the Department of Sociology in 1961. Davis then taught at the University of Southern California in 1977, simultaneously working at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution as a senior research fellow.
