Lynd, Robert Staughton (1892–1970)

US sociologist. Seminary-trained, he began his career as a missionary in Montana and then turned to sociology and anthropology in the 1920s. He later taught at Columbia University (1931–60). In 1921 he married Helen Merrell, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College. The first of their many collaborations was Middletown (1929), a landmark empirical study of urban American culture (actually Muncie, Indiana); with its 1937 sequel, this work was instrumental in bringing an anthropological perspective to the practice of contemporary sociology. Lynd was born in New Albany, Indiana.