Wendell Bell

Wendell Bell was an American sociologist and futurist, born on 27 September 1924 and died on 3 November 2019.^1,2 He was a naval aviator in the Philippines during the Second World War, graduated from Fresno State in 1948 and took his PhD at UCLA in 1952.^1,2 He taught at Stanford, Northwestern and UCLA before joining Yale in 1963, where he chaired the sociology department and retired in 1995.^1,2

His early research was on social class, race and family life in American cities, and later on elites, nationalism and social change in the new states of the Caribbean.² Yale credits him with a part in founding futures studies, where he set out possible, probable and preferable futures and studied the worldviews and myths that underlie each kind.² He worked as a futurist for over forty years.¹ The World Futures Studies Federation gave him a lifetime achievement award in 2005, and in 2008 the Association of Professional Futurists named his two-volume Foundations of Futures Studies one of the ten most important books in the field.^1,2

He is the author of Foundations of Futures Studies.