Zygmunt Bauman was born in Poznan, Poland in 1925. He moved to Britain with his wife Janina in the 1950's, and took up a position as Lecturer at both the University of Warsaw and the University of Tel Aviv. He held several visiting professorships before he became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds in Yorkshire from 1972 until his retirement in 1990. Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at both the University of Leeds and University of Warsaw (www.sociologyonline.com). "He has been described by the British sociologist, Anthony Giddens as: 'the theorist of postmodernity...he has developed a position with which everyone has to reckon'" (www.sociologyonline.com).
             While heading the Department of Sociology at Leeds, Bauman brought great qualities of intellectual leadership. "From the start he saw his task as one of inspiring students, and among his academic colleagues promoting a collegial atmosphere in which new academic projects were welcomed and free and open discussion encouraged in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and understanding" (www.leeds.ac.uk). Since his retirement, Bauman and his reputation has continued to benefit sociology at Leeds.
             Zygmunt Bauman is a prolific writer known for such works as Legislators and Interpreters (1987), Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), and Postmodern Ethics (1993). He is the author of about 21 books, two more projected for the early 2000s, and of numerous articles and reviews (www.leeds.ac.uk). In 1990, Bauman was awarded the Amalfi European Prize, followed by the Adorno Prize in 1998. "Today he is described variously as one of the twentieth century's great social theorists and the world's foremost sociologist of postmodernity" (www.leeds.ac.uk).
             Bauman's logic can be traced back to his upbringing in the Polish Humanist tradition, where society was culture. His most immediate teachers, Julian Hochfeld and Stanislaw Ossowski, viewed sociology as primarily a ser...