Carl F. Kraenzel

Born in Hebron, North Dakota, Kraenzel grew up on a farm in the countryside of the Northern Great Plains and witnessed first-hand the challenges of rural life and living in the region. Kraenzel attended the University of North Dakota for his undergraduate degree, and continued on to do graduate work at the University of Minnesota, Harvard University, and the University of Wisconsin, where he received his Ph.D in 1935. While at the University of Wisconsin, Kraenzel conducted research under Dr. E. L. Kirkpatrick on a study of relief in relation to rural rehabilitation in the Great Lakes states area of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Upon completion of the study, Kraenzel returned to Wisconsin to act as Coordinator between the Wisconsin Emergency Relief Administration and the Wisconsin College of Agriculture. Kraenzel served as a professor of sociology at Montana State University in Bozeman from 1935 to 1968, and later at the University of Texas at El Paso, from 1968 to 1973. Carl F. Kraenzel died on July 16, 1980, in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Carl Frederick Kraenzel (November 1, 1906 – July 26, 1980) was an American sociologist. Most of Kraenzel's work focuses on the people of the Great Plains, covering a range of topics including quality of life, power relations, resource use, and mental health. Kraenzel has been widely published in a variety of professional journals, monographs, research bulletins, special reports, and books in the fields of rural sociology, Great Plains sociology, and natural resource sociology. His best known work, The Great Plains in Transition, describes the challenges of social life and connections to the natural environments in the North American semiarid region located between the 98th meridian and the Rocky Mountains. While Kraenzel may not have been a historian, The Great Plains in Transition has greatly influenced the study of Great Plains history.