Most New Yorkers have probably never heard the name James Q. Wilson.

But all New Yorkers owe him a debt.

It was Wilson, arguably the nation’s foremost social scientist, who, together with George Kelling, developed the “broken windows” crime-fighting theory that Rudy Giuliani used to save the city in the ’90s.

Wilson, a former professor at Harvard and UCLA and lately a senior fellow at Boston College, died yesterday at 80.

The theory was simple — but devastatingly effective: It argued that small crimes and/or blight — like a single broken window in an abandoned building — if ignored, inevitably lead to social chaos.

“Consider a building with a few broken windows,” they wrote in their landmark 1982 article for The Atlantic.

“If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires.”

Mayor Giuliani and his police commissioners focused on long-ignored quality-of-life issues like graffiti and squeegee men and crimes like fare-beating.

The result: Crime rates, both petty and major, began tumbling. And this success has been copied around the country.

This was just one of Wilson’s many profound insights — but it’s the one for which New Yorkers can be most grateful.

As Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute said recently: “We’re all competing for the silver medal; Wilson has won the gold.” RIP.