Stanley Milgram
Dr. Stanley Milgram (Ph.D., Harvard University, Social Psychology, 1960) spent most of his career as a professor of psychology at City University of New York Graduate Center. While at Harvard, he conducted the small-world experiment (the source of the "six degrees of separation" concept); at Yale, he conducted the "Milgram experiment" on obedience to authority. He also introduced the concept of "familiar strangers."
He took a psychology course as an undergraduate at Queens College, New York, where he earned his Bachelor's degree in political science in 1954. He applied to a Ph.D. program in social psychology at Harvard University and was initially rejected due to lack of psychology background; he was accepted in 1954 after taking six courses in psychology. Most likely because of his controversial Milgram Experiment, Milgram was denied tenure at Harvard after becoming an assistant professor there, but instead accepted an offer to become a tenured full professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (Blass, 2004).
Milgram influenced later psychologists such as Alan C. Elms, who was his first graduate assistant on the obedience experiment.
“But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival.”
“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”
“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”
“It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. (1974) ”