Piotr Sztompka, born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1944. Ph.D. from Jagiellonian University, Crakow. Professor of Theoretical Sociology at Jagiellonian University, Crakow.
Guest of the Rector (Spring 2001)
I stayed at NIAS as a Guest of the Rector from 1 April- 30 June 2001. I came with a concrete purpose of completing the manuscript for a major book titled “Socjologia analityczna” (“Analytic Sociology”) that I have been preparing for some years. At NIAS I was able proceed to the writing stage and I wrote ten original chapters, translated them into Polish and also edited another five relevant chapters taken from my textbook The Sociology of Social Change (Blackwell 1993). This means that about two thirds of the whole book, of 25 chapters and 630 manuscript pages, was done at NIAS. This tempo and volume of written work would be inconceivable, were it not for the environment provided by NIAS. I found here a place for most intensive work, detachment from normal duties at my home institution, but also for a measure of social isolation necessary for creative concentration. And I found generous, hospitable, but also very efficient and professional staff. In the introduction to the book I completed here, there is a phrase: “If there is a special spot in Heaven or Eden reserved exclusively for scholars, it certainly must look like NIAS”.