William Anthony Gamson (January 27, 1934 – March 23, 2021[1]) was a professor of Sociology at Boston College, where he was also the co-director of the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP).
His influential works include Power and Discontent (1968),[3] The Strategy of Social Protest (1975),[4] Encounters with Unjust Authority (1982)[5] and Talking Politics (2002),[6] as well as numerous editions of SIMSOC.
[8] He is also a 1978 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship;[9] that same year, he was a fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
[15] Gamson was a leader and organizer of the 1965 anti-Vietnam War teach-in at the University of Michigan and continued to participate in anti-war sentiment and protest throughout the 60s and early 70s.
[21][22] Gamson and his wife Zelda, who lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, had two children, Jennifer and Joshua,[23] and five grandchildren.