Professor Karl Ulrich Mayer
Director emeritus
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Professional career and research topics
Karl Ulrich Mayer studied Sociology, Philosophy and German Language and Literature from 1964 to 1968 at the University of Tübingen, before he received a Fulbright Scholarship in 1967 enabling him to complete a Bachelor’s degree in sociology at Gonzaga University in Spokane (Washington) and a Master’s degree at Fordham University in New York City. In 1973 he completed his doctoral degree at the University of Konstanz and his post-doctoral studies in 1977 at the University of Mannheim.
From 1979 Karl Ulrich Mayer was the Director of the National Survey Research Center in Mannheim, and from 1983 to 2005 Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. From 1993 to 1999 he was Member of the Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) and from 1996 to 1999 chairman of its Academic Council.
In 2003 Mayer was appointed Professor of Sociology at Yale University, USA, where he became the Founding Director of the Center for Research on Social Inequalities and the Life Course and chaired the Department of Sociology from 2005 to 2010. He was also President of the Leibniz Association from 2010 to 2014 and is Stanley B. Resor Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Yale University (USA). In 2013, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Rostock.
Karl Ulrich Mayer is Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences; and Fellow of the British Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Europaea, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the European Academy of Sociology.
Professor Mayer was appointed an IAB Research Fellow in 2012.
His main areas of research include social stratification and mobility, comparative analyses of social structures, sociology of the life course and structures and processes of the labor market.
Karl Ulrich Mayer is Founding Editor of the European Sociological Review and has published the results of his research in various well-known journals.