Robert Sonkin
American scientist (1910–1980)
Robert Sonkin (1910 – 1980) was an American scholar of speech, language, and music.
Life
Sonkin was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in the Bronx, New York, on December 25, 1910. Sonkin, who held degrees from City College (CCNY) (now the City College of the City University of New York [CUNY]) and Columbia University, founded the speech clinic at City College. He met Charles L. Todd while they were both working in the Department of Public Speaking at City College in the late 1930s. In addition to doing ethnographic research with Todd in California, Sonkin also documented the African American community of the town of Gee's Bend, Alabama, where other Farm Security Administration (FSA) work was being carried out. After the onset of World War II, Sonkin participated in an Archive of American Folk Song-sponsored project to document the man-in-the-street's opinion of the war effort. Like Todd, Sonkin was drafted into the military during World War II, where he served in the Army Signal Corps.
At the end of the war, Sonkin returned to City College and became professor of speech. In 1977, collaborators Todd and Sonkin jointly published a biography of Alexander Bryan Johnson.
Sonkin retired from CUNY in 1976 and became professor emeritus.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american scientist (1910–1980). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7349919. VIAF identifies the subject as 33246763. The Library of Congress control number is n77009199. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1910, 1980, 1977 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Sonkin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.