Tony Coxon

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Anthony Peter Macmillan Coxon (1938–2012), known as Tony Coxon, was a British sociologist and a pioneer of multidimensional scaling. He studied how religion, occupations, social networks, and male sexuality shape society. He became a professor at 35 and later led the ESRC Research Centre, and he worked at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, where he managed the British Household Panel Survey.

Coxon’s education started at The King's School, Canterbury and Cheadle Hulme School. He then attended the universities of Leeds and Edinburgh, and he lectured at Leeds, Edinburgh and Cardiff, specializing in research methods and later in sexualities and health studies.

Thanks to visits to Harvard and MIT, Coxon was exposed to pre-Internet computing and artificial intelligence early on. He worked on Occupational Cognition, then on Multidimensional Scaling and Content Analysis. At 37, he received a chair of Sociological Research Methods at Cardiff University and soon became department head.

In 1989 he became Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Essex (then called the ESRC). From 1997 to 2002 he was Professor of Sociology and Health Studies. He co-directed the Institute for Behavioural Research on AIDS at the University of Wales College of Medicine in Cardiff and worked as a professor in the Bro Tâf Health Authority. He served on national and Welsh health education groups related to AIDS and health education.

Coxon co-founded the project SIGMA (Sociosexual Investigations of Gay Men and Aids) with Tom McManus and Peter Davies, a panel study funded by the MRC and DHSS. He led the South Wales and Essex sites from 1982 to 2002; he advised the WHO on AIDS (1987–1992) and coordinated seven-nation studies of gay and bisexual behavior and AIDS. He chaired the ESRC Steering Group on AIDS and consulted for several health authorities on HIV/AIDS research and outreach from 1996 to 2002.

He was also a member of the Committee of 100 and of the National Administrative Council of the Independent Labour Party.