Ralf Dahrendorf, sociologist and politician, dead at 80

BERLIN, June 18, 2009 (AFP) - Ralf Dahrendorf, the German-British sociologist and politician, has died aged 80, a spokeswoman for the Berlin social research centre where he was a professor said on Thursday.
Born in 1929 in the northern German port city of Hamburg, Dahrendorf was a leading European intellectual, teaching at universities around the world including Oxford. He was made a British life peer in 1993 having taken dual nationality in 1988.