A list of social theorists includes classical as well as modern thinkers in social theory that were notable for the impact of their published works on the general discipline of sociology.
Jane Addams Theodor Adorno Muhammad Asad Roland Barthes Peter L. Berger William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Pierre Bourdieu, 1930-2002 Auguste Comte Charles Cooley Anna Julia Cooper Émile Durkheim Norbert Elias Friedrich Engels Amitai Etzioni Michel Foucault, 1926-1984 Paulo Freire Ernest Gellner Charlotte Perkins Gilman Max Gluckman Erving Goffman, 1922-1982 Antonio Gramsci Ludwig Gumplowicz Jürgen Habermas Friedrich Hayek Prince Peter Kropotkin Henri Lefebvre Vladimir Lenin Niklas Luhmann, 1927-1998 György Lukács Rosa Luxemburg Jean-François Lyotard Karl Mannheim Harriet Martineau Karl Marx George Herbert Mead Ludwig von Mises Robert King Merton John Stuart Mill Charles Wright Mills Vilfredo Pareto Robert Ezra Park Talcott Parsons Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon Georg Simmel Dorothy E. Smith Pitirim A. Sorokin Herbert Spencer Rudolf Steiner William Graham Sumner Gabriel Tarde William Isaac Thomas Alexis de Tocqueville Ferdinand Tönnies Thorstein Veblen Immanuel Wallerstein Beatrice Webb Marianne Weber Max Weber