He was recognized as the leading scholar, translator and editor of the work of Max Weber in the English-speaking world; together with Claus Wittich, he translated and edited the first complete version of Weber's classic Economy and Society in English.
Later, his research interest extended to the biographical aspects of the sociological classics, in particular the genealogy of Weber's family.
[2] Roth studied at Goethe University Frankfurt under Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollock and worked at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt.
He arrived in the United States in 1953 and completed his graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1960, he obtained a PhD under Reinhard Bendix with a dissertation on the development of social democracy in Imperial Germany (1871–1918).