Tom Burns, 88, was the founding member of the department of sociology at Edinburgh University, and its first professor, from 1965 until 1981.

He was a sociologist of international distinction, with a remarkable vision and imagination which not only made him a leader in his field but often put him so far ahead that his contributions were only fully recognised many years later.

He served in the Friends Ambulance Unit (1939-45) and was

a prisoner of war in Germany between 1941 and 1943. A research assistant in the West Midland Group on Post-War Reconstruction and Planning from 1945-49, he then became

a lecturer at Edinburgh Univer-sity, where he remained until retirement in 1981.

He was one of the first sociologists to be elected to a Fellowship of the British Academy but was far more than an outstanding sociologist. His scholarship ranged widely and embraced philosophy, literature, and history, as well as sociology. He was a profound thinker and an inspiration to colleagues and students who, even if they did not fully grasp his ideas, sensed they were at the cutting edge of his subject. He was one of the first British sociologists to look beyond the United States, stressing and developing European links, and bringing European work to the attention of a wider public.

The department at Edinburgh benefited from this in many ways, not least from a steady stream of European visitors. He emphasised the importance of teaching students not just about society, but about the methodologies and skills required to study it. This insistence pre-dated, by at least a decade, concerns which surfaced in British sociology about relatively poor methodological training, especially in quantitative methods, and which reverberate to this day.

The breadth of his interests, foresight, and originality can readily be seen in his 1995 book of essays, Description, Expla-nation, and Understanding: Selected Writings, 1944-1980. His major contributions were to the sociology of organisations and bureaucracy. His first book, The Management of Innovation (1961 with G M Stalker), remains a landmark study. It showed how innovative organisations depended on informal, often horizontal linkages which did not figure in the formal structures and organisation charts of hierarchical, vertically organised firms, and indeed were frequently discouraged to their long-term detriment. These insights have affected organisation theory ever since, sometimes consciously, sometimes as half-conscious re-inventions of a wheel. The BBC: Public Institution and Private World (1977), based on 300 interviews he carried out with BBC staff, was the outcome of two extended

periods of fieldwork, within the BBC in the early 1960s and again in 1973, and a lengthy struggle to persuade that institution to allow an account to be published.

It was typical of Tom Burns's determination and persuasive skills that he eventually overcame the difficulties placed in his path.

He believed strongly that society was more interesting than sociology, and that doing empirical sociology was more important - and difficult - than theory-building for its own sake. His inaugural lecture in 1965 remains a touchstone of what sociology is for, and how it is to be done. In it, he observed: ''The practice of sociology is criticism. It exists to criticise claims about the value of achievement and to question assumptions about the meaning of conduct. It is the business of sociologists to conduct a critical debate with the public about its equipment of social institutions.'' That remains his powerful legacy for the discipline.

Tom Burns was one of those rare people who not only study institutions but know how to build them. He created a department at Edinburgh University which, more than 35 years later still, to some extent, reflects his skill in choosing colleagues with strong talents and skills across the board. He laid the foundation for the department's excellence, which is reflected in its high grades in the research assessment exercises and teaching quality assessments of recent years. Paradoxically, one can be fairly sure he would have been the first to condemn these developments as the distorting of research effort and scholarship, and immensely consuming of time which could be better spent doing sociology.

Although Tom Burns could be a marvellous host, and the annual dinner for members of staff and their partners which he hosted in the earlier years of the department was a highlight, he was basically a shy and very private person, devoted to his wife, Elizabeth, and to their five children. At times he appeared brusque and even offhand; like many interesting, hard-working, talented people these different facets of his complex personality could be baffling and even infuriating. He could be a warm and helpful person, who would spend hours talking to junior students as if their thoughts mattered, and treating them as serious scholars. At other times, he seemed oblivious to student's names or even who they were.

He was, however, able to generate loyalty and affection among his colleagues, which is reflected in the close and egalitarian working relationship he had over

many years with his departmental secretary. His frequent complaint that he was hopelessly over-committed eventually led her to leave a note on his desk saying ''learning to say 'no' does more good than learning Latin'', only to receive the reply next morning ''I never learned Latin''. That somehow sums up the man and his nature.

Tom Burns, sociologist;

born January 16, 1913,

died, June 20, 2001.

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