Eckler was born in Van Hornesville, New York in 1901 and lived on a farm until he attended Hamilton College.

He then earned a master's degree and a PhD at Harvard University in 1934.

Eckler joined the Census Bureau in 1939 as chief of economic statistics in the Population Division.

[1] He authored The Bureau of the Census (ISBN 0-275-55370-1), and was president of the American Statistical Association.

He is also the father of logologist and centenarian researcher A. Ross Eckler, Jr.