J. Allan Beegle joined the faculty at Michigan State College (now Michigan State University_ in 1945 as an assistant professor in sociology, teaching courses in population and rural sociology and conducting migration and social mobility research for the Agriculture Experiment Station. At his retirement 42 years later, he was the longest-serving tenured faculty member on the Michigan State University campus. Over the years, Beegle trained people in rural sociology which included aspects of agriculture, natural resources and small-town life. His graduate students have conducted research for U.S. governmental agencies and in Third World countries. Beegle was born September 13, 1918, in Bedford, Pennsylvania, to J. A. S. Beegle and Grace Rebecca Hunt. He received a B.S. in 1939 from Pennsylvania State University, an M.S. in 1941 from Iowa State University, and a Ph.D. in 1946 from Louisiana State University. He and his wife, Ruth, had three children – Margaret Ruth, Katherine Lisa, and Allan Paul. Beegle is known internationally for his work in rural sociology, demographic trends and population studies. He felt the hardships of rural people and devoted much of his life to research in that area. Beegle’s contributions to sociology have been very important to the field of sociology and to population and demographic studies. He has been called the “cornerstone in sociology and population studies” by one his colleagues. He is the author or coauthor of numerous articles for professional journals including such titles as “The Strategy of Rural Change,” “Differential Fertility in the U.S.,” “The Integration of Rural Migrants in New Settings,” and “Differentiation of Ethnic Groups in the United States with Special Reference to Rural Areas.” He has written five books and contributed research for 54 other books and professional publications. Beegle received a Fulbright grant for research in Finland in 1953 and was awarded the MSU Distinguished Faculty Award in 1973. In 1967, he served as a staff member on the President’s Commission on Rural Poverty in the U.S. He was the chairman of the Regional Project in Population and Migration, the author of papers presented at the Fourth World Conference of Sociology in Stressa, Italy, in 1959, and author of papers presented at the Farm Population and Labor Mobility Conference in Ames, Iowa, in 1960. Professional organizations which Beegle belonged to include the American Sociological Association, the Rural Sociological Society, the North Central Sociological Association, the American Association of University Professors, the Population Association of America, and the International Union for Scientific Study of Population.