Andrew Delano Abbott is an American sociologist and the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Abbott studied history and literature at Harvard University, gaining his BA in 1970. He gained his PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1982. He taught for thirteen years at Rutgers University before returning to Chicago in 1991. He has made important contributions in the areas of the sociology of occupations and professions, social sequence analysis, historical sociology, sociology of knowledge, and social theory. He has edited the American Journal of Sociology since 2001.