Stephen Cole was an American sociologist, who was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Stony Brook University. His scholarly work was on the development of the sociology of science as an academic field. He was a founding member of Columbia's Program in the Sociology of Science, along with Robert K. Merton, Harriet Zuckerman, and his brother Jonathan R. Cole. The project was supported by the National Science Foundation for 20 years and produced a substantial body of both theoretical and empirical work. He collaborated with his brother Jonathan Cole on studies of the system of social stratification in science and on the reward system in science, examining the extent to which the social system of science approximated a meritocracy, culminating in their co-authored book, Social Stratification in Science. In this work, they developed the use of citations as a measure of scientific quality and impact, the first social scientists to do so. Although it met with initial resistance, it is today widely used as a measure of scholarly impact, and there is a very substantial literature on it. Cole also published works dealing with the sociology of education as a profession, with racial discrimination in science, and several widely used textbooks.
Publications
Books
Cole, Stephen. The Unionization of Teachers: A Case Study of the UFT. New York: Praeger, 1969.
Cole, Stephen. The Sociological Method. Chicago: Markham Pub. Co, 1972.
Cole, Jonathan R., and Stephen Cole. Social Stratification in Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Cole, Stephen, Leonard Rubin, and Jonathan R. Cole. Peer Review in the National Science Foundation: Phase Two of a Study" National Academy of Sciences. Washington: The Academy, 1981
Cole, Stephen. The Sociological Method: An Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago: Rand McNally Pub. Co, 1980. 3rd ed.
Cole, Stephen. Making Science: Between Nature and Society. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Cole, Stephen, and Elinor G. Barber. Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003.
*Review: "Liberal Study: Affirmative Action Hurts Blacks" by: Robin Wilson, Chronicle of Higher Education'' Thursday, January 30, 2003
Journal articles
He has also published several dozen journal articles.
