Career
He is best known for his 1963 groundbreaking work in medical sociology, Timetables: Structuring the Passage of Time in Hospital Treatment and Other Careers, based in part on his own experience as a tuberculosis (Tuberculosis) patient. Excerpts from Timetables were included in the Penguin Modern Sociology Readings anthology Rules and Meanings (1973). Roth is sometimes associated with the so-called "Second" Chicago School of Sociology, although his University of Chicago degrees (Master of Arts, 1950.
Doctor of Philosophy, 1954) were both awarded through the Committee on Human Development.
Roth describes how his mentors Everett Hughes and David Riesman encouraged him to keep a journal during his Tuberculosis hospitalizations, which eventually led to the publication of Timetables.
