John E. Knodel *65
John died Jan. 10, 2024, in Ann Arbor, Mich., of aspiration pneumonia and congestive heart failure. He was 83.
John was born July 25, 1940, in Mount Vernon, N.Y. He graduated from Duke in 1961 with a degree in psychology and earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton in 1965.
John’s research during a postdoctoral fellowship at Free University, Berlin, resulted in the publication of The Decline of Fertility in Germany, 1871-1939, and Demographic Behavior in the Past: A Study of Fourteen German Village Populations in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
He joined the sociology faculty at Rutgers and renewed his association with Princeton as a research scientist in the Office of Population Research. In 1971, the Population Council and the Institute of Population Studies at Chulalongkorn University offered John a position in Bangkok. In Southeast Asia his interests expanded from fertility to include mortality; migration; intergenerational relations; aging; and the interactions between the HIV epidemic and demographic processes.
After two years in Thailand, John spent a year at Brown University before joining the sociology department and the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, where he remained from 1975 to 2004.
John is survived by his wife, Chanpen Saengtienchai.
Graduate alumni memorials are prepared by the APGA.
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