Leonard Broom

Broom was educated at Boston University (B.S. Phi Beta Kappa, 1933; A.M., 1934) and Duke University (Ph.D., 1937). In 1941, he obtained a tenure-track appointment at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), making him the second person to be named to the faculty of the department of sociology and anthropology there. From 1955 to 1957, he was the editor-in-chief of the American Sociological Review. In 1959, he left the faculty of UCLA to become a professor at the University of Texas-Austin (UT-Austin), where he helped establish the Population Research Center. He was the Ashbel Smith Professor of Sociology at UT-Austin from 1959 to 1971, and chair of the sociology department there from 1959 to 1966. In 1971, he became a professor of sociology at the Institute of Advanced Studies at The Australian National University, where he continued to teach until 1976. He was a research associate at the University of California-Santa Barbara from 1980 until his death.[3]

Broom received a Fulbright Fellowship in 1950 to conduct research in Jamaica, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1958 for research in Australia. While on the faculty of UT-Austin, he received a one-year fellowship in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1962-3). He was a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the Royal Anthropological Institute, and received an honorary degree (DSc) from Boston University.[3] In 2002, the Research School of Population Health at the Australian National University established the Leonard Broom endowment in his honor; it serves to give indigenous Australians the opportunity to pursue health-related careers.[4] In 2011, the Leonard and Gretchan Broom Center for Demography was established at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with generous funding from Broom and his wife, Gretchan.[5][6]