Beck, Ulrich (1944)

This German sociologist was interested in the consequences of changes brought about by industrial and technological development. Beck was a theoretician of the paradigm of the society of risks, and can be considered as a scholar whose interests are equally divided between the academic and the political world. He was at one and the same time a professor of sociology at the University of Munich and an essayist involved in movements dedicated to the protection of the environment. Ulrich Beck was also a public intellectual who regularly wrote articles for major German newspapers. He was a scientist who went out of his way to encounter the reality of nonscientists, and functioned as a political actor as a result.