Harold Stephen Bucklin (1886-1967) was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He graduated from Brown University in 1910. While he was an undergraduate, he also served as Principal of the Evening Grammar School in Pawtucket from 1908 to 1910. From 1910 to 1913 he taught school in Ironwood, Michigan. While a graduate student at the New York School of Social Work, he was both a resident and Playground Director of the Henry Street Settlement; he earned a Master of Arts degree in 1915. He returned to Brown University as an Instructor in Social Science in 1915; he earned his Ph.D. degree in 1918.

In 1920, he married Hazel D. Hartwell (1898-1962). They had four children (Donald, John, Mary and Ruth). In 1923, while an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Brown University, Harold traveled to Shanghai with his wife, Hazel, and their two-year-old son, Donald, to serve as a Visiting Professor of Sociology at Shanghai College for one year. As part of the program, he directed a social settlement center and helped college students conduct a survey of a Chinese village.

Bucklin specialized in social problems, surveys, and social legislation. He was involved with many of the social institutions in Rhode Island; he served as chairman of the Americanization Commission in 1919; he was as a member of the Children's Law Commission in 1926; and he served on the Juvenile Court Commission in 1938. In 1922, Bucklin published a series of articles surveying the institutions dealing with disadvantaged children. At Brown, he was promoted to Associate Professor of Sociology in 1929, and became a full Professor in 1949. In 1946, Bucklin was the Chairman of Sociology within the Department of Political Science and Sociology. From 1947 to 1948 he served as the Chairman of the separate Department of Sociology. He retired in 1951. He died on September 29, 1967, while visiting his daughter in Elyria, Ohio.