Month: November 2022

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Economics Ph.D. Alumnus (1969) Paul Gregory. He actually knew Lee Harvey Oswald. 1963.

Something tells me that this happy little niche blog is about to get swamped with comments by legions of JFK-assassination “experts”. Be that as it may, Economics in the Rear-view Mirror has a duty to share the good, bad, and the ugly artefacts and accounts of the lives of economists and the structures of their training. Besides which, Paul Gregory, the subject of this post, is an old friend and a senior colleague from my University of Houston years. He is a co-author of the leading undergraduate textbooks on the Soviet Economy and Comparative Economic Systems with Robert Stuart, and together, we once wrote an article on unemployment in the Soviet Union that was published in the American Economic Review. Paul Gregory is currently a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Before he went off to graduate school at Harvard, Paul Gregory happened to  be tutored in conversational Russian by Marina Oswald, the wife of the, then, future assassin of John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald. Husband Lee was always present during those tutorials, to keep Marina under his watchful jealous eye. Because of this connection to the Oswald family, both Paul Gregory and his father became persons of great interest to investigators in the days and months following President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. They turn up in the Warren Commission Report.  (Testimony of father Peter Paul Gregory and his son Paul Roderick Gregory.)

His book The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee has just been published. A (clutching my pearls) sensational summary of its content has been published in the Daily Mail. I haven’t read the book yet, but over the years Paul has shared with his colleagues the one or the other anecdote about Lee and Marina. Of course I’m going to read this book soon!

Addition July 8, 2023..Here is an interview with Paul Gregory about his book.

For my fellow veterans of the Cold War in or out of the academic trenches, here is a convenient link to a list of Paul Gregory’s many substantial publications.

I close with a colorized undergraduate yearbook photo of Paul Gregory in his scholar-athlete days, much as the Oswalds would have known him.

Paul R. Gregory was quite an intercollegiate tennis player at the University of Oklahoma. Picture from the 1963 yearbook, p. 148.

Image Sources: Mugshot of Lee Harvey Oswald from the Dallas Police; Senior Class portrait of Paul Gregory from the 1963 University of Oklahoma Yearbook, p. 291. Both images have been colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror because there was color in 1963 America.

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. List of Ph.D. recipients in History and Political Science, 1873-1901

Before there was a department of political economy or economics at Harvard there was a Division of History and Political Science that continued on to become the Division of History, Government and Economics. Earlier student records for graduate students of economics as well as for the other departments were kept at this divisional and not departmental level. Altogether a total of 45 Ph.D. degrees were awarded at Harvard going up through 1901, not quite a third to men who were or became economists or economic historians.

The following list includes the activity of the Ph.D. alumni, presumably as of 1900-01.

____________________

DIVISION OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
RECIPIENTS OF THE DEGREE OF PH.D., 1873-1901.

(* deceased)

Field. Date.
1. Charles Leavitt Beals Whitney* History. 1873.
2. Stuart Wood Pol. Sci. 1875.
3. James Laurence Laughlin
(Prof. Chicago)		 History. 1876.
4. Henry Cabot Lodge
(Former Instr. Harv., now Senator)		 History. 1876.
5. Ernest Young*
(Late Prof. Harvard)		 History. 1876.
6. Freeman Snow*
(Late Instr. Harvard)		 History. 1877.
7. Franklin Bartlett History. 1878.
8. Melville Madison Bigelow
(Prof. Boston Univ.)		 History. 1878.
9. Edward Channing
(Prof. Harvard)		 History. 1880.
10. Denman Waldo Ross
(Lecturer, Harvard)		 History. 1880.
11. Samuel Eppes Turner*
(once Instr. Philips Exeter)		 History. 1880.
12. Frank William Taussig
(Prof. Harvard)		 Pol. Sci. 1883.
13. Andrew Fiske
(Lawyer)		 History. 1886.
14. Charles William Colby
(Prof. McGill)		 History. 1890.
15. Edson Leone Whitney
(Prof. Bezonia)		 History. 1890.
16. Herman Vanderburg Ames
(Prof. Pennsylvania)		 History. 1891.
17. Fred Emory Haynes
(Charity Work)		 History. 1891.
18. Evarts Boutell Greene
(Prof. Illinois)		 History. 1893.
19. Charles Luke Wells
(Recent Prof. Minnesota)		 History. 1893.
20. Willian Edward Burghardt DuBois
(Prof. Atlanta)		 Pol. Sci. 1895.
21. Kendric Charles Babcock
(Prof. California)		 History. 1896.
22. Howard Hamblett Cook
(Statistician)		 Pol. Sci. 1896.
23. Theodore Clarke Smith
(Prof. Ohio State Univer.)		 Pol. Sci. 1896.
24. Guy Stevens Callender
(Prof. Bowdoin)		 Pol. Sci. 1897.
25. Clyde Augustus Duniway
(Prof. Leland Stanford Univ.)		 Pol. Sci. 1897.
26. Gaillard Thomas Lapsley
(Instr. Univ. Cali.)		 History. 1897.
27. Charles Whitney Mixter
(Instr. Harvard)		 Pol. Sci. 1897.
28. Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague
(Instr. Harvard)		 Pol. Sci. 1897.
29. George Ole Virtue
(Prof. Wisconsin Normal)		 Pol. Sci. 1897.
30. Samuel Bannister Harding
(Prof. Indiana)		 History. 1898.
31. James Sullivan, Jr.
(Instr. N.Y. [DeWitt Clinton] High School)		 History. 1898.
32. Arthur Mayer Wolfson
(Instr. N.Y. [DeWitt Clinton] High School)		 History. 1898.
33. Frederick Redman Clow
(Prof. Minnesota Normal)		 Pol. Sci. 1899.
34. Arthur Lyons Cross
(Instr. Michigan)		 History. 1899.
35. Louis Clinton Hatch. History. 1899.
36. Norman Maclaren Trenholme
(Instr. Pa. State College)		 History. 1899.
37. Abram Piatt Andrew, Jr.
(Instr. Harvard)		 Pol. Sci. 1900.
38. Sidney Bradshaw Fay
(Instr. Harvard)		 History. 1900.
39. Carl Russell Fish
(Instr. Wisconsin)		 History. 1900.
40. William Bennett Munro
(Instr. McGill)		 Pol. Sci. 1900.
41. Subharama Swaminadhan Pol. Sci. 1900.
42. Don Carlos Barrett
(Prof. Haverford)		 Pol. Sci. 1901.
43. Herbert Camp Marshall Pol. Sci. 1901.
44. Jonas Viles History. 1901.
45. Arthur Herbert Wilde
(Prof. Northeastern)		 History. 1901.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Division of History, Government & Economics. PhD. Material. Box 1, Folder “PhD degrees conferred, 1873-1901 (Folder 1 of 2).”

Image Source: Harvard Square, ca. 1901-07. History Cambridge webpage “Postcard Series I: Harvard Square”.

Categories
Economists Harvard

Harvard. Copy of Schumpeter’s letter to Crum regarding Samuelson’s course performance, 1936

Following the last post that provided a transcription of Joseph Schumpeter’s letter of recommendation for Marion Crawford, this post gives us a glimpse of the 20 year old “youngster” who would marry Marion Crawford a few years later.

_______________________________

Schumpeter asking for instructor feedback for Samuelson’s SSRC fellowship

February 12, 1936

Prof. Leonard Crum
Holyoke 46

Dear Leonard:

You know, perhaps you don’t, that the Social Science Research Council has now adopted a policy for their pre-doctoral fellowships to ask a man to act as what they call a sponsor to the fellow. I am acting in this capacity for Samuelson and it is part of my duties to collect opinions from his other teachers to send to them so that they know how their lambs are shaping up, and notably whether they should get an extension for another year.

Samuelson seems to have done very well in your course. In any case, I would be very grateful if you would be good enough to send me or to sent [sic] the Social Science Research Council (Committee on Social Research Personnel, R. H. Shryock, 230 Park Avenue, New York City) your opinion about that youngster.

I really feel that I need not apologize for intruding upon you during your well earned rest because I believe that this little bit of official business will make you feel sweet liberty from the rest all the more intensely.

With best wishes,

J. A. Schumpeter

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers, 1930-1961. Box 21, Folder “Joseph A. Schumpeter 1933-1942”.

Image Source: Original black-and-white photo of Samuelson from the slideshow at the M.I.T. Memorial Service (April 10, 2010).  Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Categories
Economists Gender Harvard Radcliffe

Radcliffe. Schumpeter Letter Supporting Marion Crawford, 1937

Paul Samuelson’s first wife (they were married in Cambridge in 1938) and mother of their six children, Marion Estelle Crawford (b. 1915, d. 1978) graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe in 1937, with an A.B. summa cum laude in economics. For graduate study she was awarded a Harvard Annex Fellowship in 1937-38.   In 1938-39 she received an Augustus Anson Whitney and Benjamin White Whitney Fellowship. She was awarded an A.M. in economics in 1940. Her sole publication was “The Australian Case for Protection Reexamined” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1939). Her New York Times obituary closed with the sentence “She retired when her first child was born in 1946.”  It was still a time when motherhood was an absorbing state.

_________________________

High-School Honours

Source: Berlin High School (Wisconsin) 1933 Yearbook Mascoutin, pp. 16-17.

_________________________

Senior Yearbook Picture
Radcliffe, 1937

Source; The Radcliffe 30 and 7, p. 48.

_________________________

Copy of Joseph Schumpeter’s letter supporting Marion Crawford’s application for a fellowship

February 11, 1937

Dr. Bernice Cronkhite, Dean
Radcliffe College
Cambridge, Massachusetts

This is to support Miss Marion Crawford’s application for a fellowship for the next academic year. There cannot be any doubt but that she is one of our best students and that every effort should be made to make her further study financially possible. She proves her ability by the fact that, being a senior, she takes graduate courses with the utmost ease, and in fact much better than most of the graduates, whether male or female. Her equipment should prove particularly useful in the present state of economics, and I feel confident that her work will do credit to her and to Radcliffe.

Very sincerely yours,

J. A. Schumpeter

Source: Harvard University Archives. Department of Economics, Correspondence and Papers, 1930-1961. Box 21, Folder “Joseph A. Schumpeter 1933-1942”.

Image Source: Detail from a black-and-white photo of Marion Crawford and Paul Samuelson from the slideshow at the M.I.T. Memorial Service for Paul Samuelson (April 10, 2010).  Colorized by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.