Thomas Luckmann

Thomas Luckmann (October 14, 1927 – May 10, 2016) was an American-Austrian sociologist of Slovene origin who taught mainly in Germany. His contributions were central to studies in sociology of communication, sociology of knowledge, sociology of religion, and the philosophy of science.

He was born as Tomaž Luckmann in the Slovenian industrial border town of Jesenice, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. His father was an Austrian industrialist, while his mother was from a Slovene family from Ljubljana. On his mother's side, he was the cousin of the Slovene poet Božo Vodušek. He grew up in a bilingual environment. In the family, they spoke both Slovene and German, and he attended Slovene-language schools in Jesenice until 1941, and then German ones. During World War II, he and his mother moved to Vienna. Luckmann studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of Vienna and Innsbruck. He later moved to the United States, where he studied at The New School in New York City.

He worked as a professor of Sociology at the University of Konstanz in Germany, where he was professor emeritus since 1994.^{(Citation required)} He died at the age of 88 on May 10, 2016.