John Harry Goldthorpe (born 27 May 1935) is a British sociologist. He is an emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. His main research interests are in the fields of social stratification and mobility, and comparative macro-sociology. He also writes on methodological issues in relation to the integration of empirical, quantitative research and theory with a particular focus on issues of causation. Early life Goldthorpe was born in Great Houghton, a remote mining village in the then West Riding of Yorkshire. His father was a colliery clerk and his mother a dressmaker. He was educated at Wath Grammar School, and then took a first class honours degree in history at University College London, being much influenced by the teaching of Alfred Cobban and Gustaaf Renier. Afterwards, he became a graduate student in sociology at the London School of Economics. Academic career Goldthorpe was a Junior Research Fellow and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Leicester from 1957 to 1960, working on the structure of a new degree with Ilya Neustadt and Norbert Elias. In 1960 he was elected to a Prize Fellowship in Sociology at King's College, Cambridge – the first position in sociology to be established in the University. He taught history at Kings and from 1962, as University Assistant Lecturer and then Lecturer, sociology courses within the revised Economics Tripos. He formed close relationships with his colleague, David Lockwood, and also with T. H. Marshall who was living in retirement in Cambridge. In 1969 he was elected to an Official Fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford, and remained there until his retirement in 2002. He has had many graduate students who have become noted sociologists in Britain and abroad including Tak-Wing Chan, John Child, Colin Crouch, Gorana Djoric, Ricca Edmondson, Geoff Evans, Duncan Gallie, Anne Gauthier, Brendan Halpin, Niamh Hardiman, Anthony Heath, Geoffrey Ingham, Michelle Jackson, Yao-jun Li, Susan MacRae, John McCallum, José-Maria Maravall, Gordon Marshall, Colin Mills, Deborah Posel, William Roche, Graeme Salaman, Sawako Shirahase and Meir Yaish. From 1970 to 1973 Goldthorpe was Editor of Sociology. But from the mid-1970s he became disappointed and disillusioned with the state of sociology in Britain, chiefly because of what he regarded as the undue dominance of socio-political commitments and pseudo-philosophical positions and the disregard of, if not actual hostility towards, new quantitative methods. He left the British Sociological Association and, outside of Oxford, worked mainly with