ABSTRACT
Ruth Rosner Kornhauser is an influential mysterious figure in the field of criminology for a number of reasons. Social Sources of Delinquency: An Appraisal of Analytic Models (SSD), a book adaptation of her University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, is one of the field's landmark contributions. The rediscovery of the Ruth Kornhauser 1963 manuscript was the product of multiple efforts, all operating concurrently. The very existence of the work also begs the question of whether Kornhauser's analysis of criminological theory changed or remained constant in the ensuing years leading up to the publication of SSD. At the very end of the 1960s, Ruth Kornhauser met Travis Hirschi, a young sociologist who was beginning to establish a reputation in delinquency research. The major transformation in Kornhauser's thinking came with regard to strain theory—a perspective she favored in 1963, but by 1978 rejected with unwavering conviction: "Strain models are disconfirmed".
