[4][5][6] Major General, heir, and eugenicist Frederick H. Osborn, a graduate of Princeton University, laid the foundation for the Office of Population Research in 1936.

[7] The founding director of OPR was Frank W. Notestein, who was a demographer at the Milbank Memorial Fund, a leading peer-reviewed healthcare journal.

One of the early faculty appointments was Irene Barnes Taeuber, whose scholarly work helped found the science of demography.

[8] The current Director of the OPR is Douglas Massey, an American sociologist and Professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

[15] Outside of Princeton, the OPR maintains partnerships with some of the world's leading research centers, including the Wiggenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.