Univ.-Prof. Dr. Paul Martin Neurath

Paul Martin Neurath was born in Vienna as the only legitimate child of the Jewish sociologist and philosopher Otto Neurath and the social scientist, women's rights activist and translator Anna, née Schapire. After attending elementary school and grammar school in Vienna, Paul Neurath, who joined the Socialist Youth as a teenager, studied law at the University of Vienna from 1930. He received his doctorate in 1937 and became a trainee lawyer.

On March 12, 1938, the active socialist witnessed the downfall of a free and independent Austria when the German Wehrmacht invaded. He tried to flee, but was arrested before reaching the Czechoslovakian border on March 13, 1938. On April 2, 1938, he was deported to the Dachau concentration camp on the so-called 'Prominent Transport'. On September 23, 1938, he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Paul Neurath was released there on May 27, 1939. He emigrated to Sweden on June 5, 1939.

In Sweden, he first attended a metal apprenticeship and worked as a metalworker in Götheborg. In May 1941, he finally managed to emigrate to the United States of America, arriving in New York on June 3, 1941. He immediately enrolled at Columbia University in New York and obtained his doctorate in sociology there in 1943. Between 1941 and 1944, he worked as a coder at the Office of Radio Research [later: Bureau of Applied Social Research] at Columbia University, which had been founded and was headed by Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, whom he held in high esteem. Between 1942 and 1946 he became Assistant in Statistics at the Graduate Faculty of Columbia University, in October 1943 Lecturer in Statistics at City College of the New York School of Business [later: Bernard M. Baruch College]. From 1945 to 1955, he was also a statistics consultant at the lndustrial Commodities Corp., New York.

In the United States of America, he experienced the liberation of Austria, but did not return to his home country and instead became a US citizen. In February 1946, Paul Neurath became a faculty member of the Department of Sociology at Queens College, New York (City University of New York): initially Instructor, 1953 Assistant Professor, 1959 Associate Professor and 1962 Full Professor of Sociology and Statistics; he was also a member of the Doctoral Faculty in Sociology from 1965.

From 1965, Paul Neurath was a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS). Even before that, in 1961, 1962, 1963 and 1971 to 1972, he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Vienna, where he taught as an honorary professor (combined with a permanent venia legendi) from 1973 and continued to hold several visiting professorships.

He retired in February 1977, but continued to teach graduate courses for several years. In 1980, he founded the Lazarsfeld Archive at the University of Vienna, which he directed until his death.

He died in New York shortly before his 90th birthday.