Elton Mayo
Mayo was a pioneering researcher in the sociology of management, known primariy as the lead researcher in the now-famous Hawthorne studies. These studies used statistical methods to prove that human factors must also be considered in the workplace along with physical factors such as ergonomics and environment.
Mayo was introduced to Parieto's sociological studies late in life in 1926. His book The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization written in 1933 after the Hawthorne studies did much to establish his reputation as one who was able to apply advances in sociology to the theories of management. He often analyzed researches of others in the context of his theories of the social man and social needs. Indeed Mayo was an excellent publicist for his ideas, using statistical methods to validate his theories.
Mayo's contributions were in management and social sciences, using statistics as an analytical tool rather than in advancing the science of statistics itself. Today Mayo is recognized as the founder of the "human relations" school of management. A short biography of Mayo by Mr. Willie Lucas, a student at St. Francis University in Canada, is available online.
Born: 26 Decemer 1880 in Adelaide , Australia
Died: 7 September 1949
The premiere site for biographies of mathematicians on the web is at The University of Saint Andrews in Scotland; this is the primary source of the information in these short biographies. Some biographies used additional web resources as noted in the biography.
The postage stamp images came from a wonderful site on mathematicians on stamps maintained by Jeff Miller, a mathematics teacher in Florida.
The Free Internet Encyclopedia Wikipedia is also an excellent source of information and was used as a reference for many bographies.
The opinions expressed in these biographies are those of the author and do not reflect official views of the University of Oklahoma.
