Pinch (1 January 1952 – 16 December 2021) was a British sociologist, part-time musician and chair of the science and technology studies department at Cornell University.

[3][4] He held a degree in physics from Imperial College London and a PhD in sociology from the University of Bath.

Together with Wiebe Bijker, Pinch started the movement known as Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) within the sociology of science.

Pinch died from cancer, four years after his initial diagnosis, on 16 December 2021 at the age of 69.

His book Confronting Nature is widely considered the definitive sociological account of the history of the solar neutrino problem, and was mentioned by Raymond Davis in his 2002 Nobel Prize autobiography.