Anthony PM Coxon

Anthony Peter Macmillan Coxon (1938-2012), better known as Tony Coxon, was a sociologist and pioneer of multidimensional scaling. His fields of research included religion, occupations, social networks and male sexuality. Appointed professor at the age of 35, Coxon later became first director of the ESRC Research Centre and subsequently worked at the Institute for Social and Economic Research of the University of Essex, where he managed the British Household Panel Survey.

Tony Coxon's education began at King's Canterbury and Cheadle Hulme School. Thereafter, he attended the universities of Leeds and Edinburgh. Thanks to a research scholarship and visits to Harvard and MIT, he became familiar with pre-Internet computing and Artificial Intelligence at an early stage. From Occupational Cognition, he moved on to Multidimensional Scaling and Content Analysis. At 37, Coxon was offered a chair of Sociological Research Methods at Cardiff University, where he soon became Department head. In 1989 he took up the post of Director of the new Interdisciplinary Research Centre of the University of Essex, as the ESRC was then called.

Coxon was also a member of the Committee of 100, and of the National Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party.