Lynd, Robert (Staughton); and Lynd, Helen

(born Sept. 26, 1892, New Albany, Ind., U.S.—died Nov. 1, 1970, Warren, Conn.) (born March 17, 1894, La Grange, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 30, 1982, Warren, Ohio) U.S. sociologists. The Lynds taught for several decades at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College, respectively. In their collaboration on the studies Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937), classics of sociological literature as well as popular successes, they became the first scholars to apply the methods of cultural anthropology to the study of a modern Western city (Muncie, Ind.).