Eliot Freidson (pronounced "fried-son") was born in Boston on February 20, 1923, to Joseph and Grace Backer Freidson, both of whom emigrated from Russia as children. He attended the University of Maine for one year in 1941, transferring to the University of Chicago in 1942. He served in the U.S. Army from April 1943 to July 1946 in Europe as a translator of German and intelligence analyst. Freidson earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1952. He taught first at the City College of New York before becoming an associate professor at NYU in 1961 and achieving full professorship in 1964. Freidson served as chair of the Department of Sociology from 1975 to 1978. He retired in 1993 and was a professor emeritus at NYU until his death. He served as president of the Eastern Sociological Society from 1985 to 1986. He died on December 14, 2005 of non-Hodgkins lymphoma in San Francisco.

Freidson studied the sociology of professions and was most widely recognized for his studies of the medical field. He wrote 12 books and over 100 scholarly articles.