Thomas Patterson is a famous professor of government and media at Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. He was a professor of political science at Maxwell Civic College of Syracuse University. He grew up in a small town near the border between Iowa and South Dakota, Minnesota. He studied at South Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota, and received his doctorate at 197 1.

Professor Patterson has published seven books and dozens of papers, and his main research topics are media and elections. The latest book is The Disappeared Voter (2002), which describes and explains the long-term trend of American electoral participation. The earlier Out of Order (1994) was praised by President Clinton as a book that every politician and journalist should read, which attracted national attention in the United States. In 2002, Chaos was praised as a best seller in the field of political communication in the past decade by the Graber Award of the American Political Science Association. His other book, Mass Media Election (1980), won the excellent academic works selection award 1980- 198 1. Paterson's first book, The Invisible Eye (1976). It was selected as one of the 50 most influential books in the field of public opinion research in the past half century by the American Public Opinion Research Association.

His research was strongly supported by National Science Foundation, Kyle Foundation, Smith-Richardson Foundation, Ford Foundation and Pew Charitable Trust.