Ulrich Beck

Ulrich Beck was born on 15 May 1944 in Germany and became one of the most cited social scientists of his lifetime. He built his career around the uncontrollability and uncertainty woven into modern existence, coining "second modernity" and "reflexive modernization" to describe a world constantly revising its own assumptions. He argued that sociology had to abandon its national tunnel vision and embrace cosmopolitanism — the fact that everything now connects. He taught at LMU Munich and held posts at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris and the London School of Economics. He di…