William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist. He was born on December 20, 1935 in Derry, Pennsylvania. Wilson was educated at Wilberforce University (B.A., 1958) and Bowling Green State University (M.A., 1961) in Ohio, as well as at Washington State University(Ph.D., 1966).

In 1998 he was awarded the National Medal of Science.  His books include Power, Racism and Privilege (1973), The Declining Significance of Race (1978), The Truly Disadvantaged(1987), When Work Disappears (1996), The Bridge over the Racial Divide (1999), There Goes the Neighborhood (2006, co-author), Good Kids from Bad Neighborhoods (2006), and, most recently, More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (2009). He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Education and the Institute of Medicine. He is also past President of the American Sociological Association, and is a MacArthur Prize Fellow.