Steven Ruggles

Steven Ruggles is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History at the University of Minnesota and the Director of the Minnesota Population Center. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. His academic specialties include U.S. census research, U.S. social history, historical demography, and history of the family. Christened "The King of Quant" by Wired Magazine in 2003, Steve has emerged as one of the most widely known historical demographers in the world. Colleagues describe him as a "scholar of astonishing breadth of knowledge and productivity whose work has reshaped the field of historical demography and has had a profound effect on the fields of sociology, economics and history." Steve has helped raise approximately $65 million in research funds to create, improve and disseminate population data. At the Minnesota Population Center, he and his team have collected, coded, computerized, systematized and delivered to scholars the individual records of millions of Americans going back to 1850. The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series or IPUMS is considered one of the most valuable databases of all time and has made the University of Minnesota one of the largest social science data distributors in the world.