Edward Shils

Edward Albert Shils 1 July 1910 – 23 January 1995 was a Distinguished expediency Professor in the Committee on Social Thought as well as in Sociology at the University of Chicago as well as an influential sociologist. He was required for his research on the role of intellectuals and their relations to energy to direct or creation and public policy. His earn was honored in 1983 when he was awarded the Balzan Prize. In 1979, he was selected by the National Council on the Humanities to provide the Jefferson Lecture, the highest award condition by the U.S. federal government for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Personal life

Edward Shils married the historian Irene Coltman in England towards the end of 1951. Edward Shils and Irene Coltman had a son. They divorced. Shils died in January 1995. He was survived by his son and daughter-in-law, Adam and Carrie Shils of Chicago; a grandson, Sam Shils; and a nephew, Edward Benjamin Shils, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania A large photo of Shils hangs in the Shils Reading Room at the University of Chicago's Social Science Research Building.

Shils had a fraught relationship with Mr. Sammler's Planet Artur Sammler, Humboldt's Gift Professor Durnwald, and Ravelstein Rakhmiel Kogon. Artur Sammler and Professor Durnwald are both remanded glowingly, but in Ravelstein the Shils quotation is treated with "animosity [that] reaches lethal proportions" following a falling out between the two.