Robert Staughton Lynd

Robert Staughton Lynd (1892–1970) was an American sociologist best known for co-authoring, with Helen Merrell Lynd, the influential “Middletown” studies of American life. Educated at Princeton University and Union Theological Seminary, he later earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University. The Lynds’ fieldwork in Muncie, Indiana, produced *Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture* (1929) and *Middletown in Transition* (1937), landmark works in community research and the sociology of everyday life. Lynd taught at Columbia and wrote on social class, culture, and the pressures shaping modern American society.