Robert Staughton Lynd was an American sociologist and professor at Columbia University, New York City. Robert and his wife Helen Lynd are best known for writing the groundbreaking "Middletown" studies of Muncie, Indiana - Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937), which are classics of American sociology. Muncie was the first community to be systematically examined by sociologists in the United States.