Ronald Coase

Ronald Coase, the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics and the oldest living Nobel laureate, died September 2 in Chicago. He was 102. A pioneer in the field of law and economics, Coase published several groundbreaking articles, including "The Nature of the Firm" (1937) and "The Problem of Social Cost" (1960), which is widely considered the seminal work in law and economics and laid out the Coase theorem, which holds that under conditions of perfect competition, private and social costs are equal. In 1991 he received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy." A statistician with the Central Statistical Office of the offices of the British war cabinet during World War II, Coase taught at the London School of Economics, the University of Buffalo, and the University of Virginia before joining the University of Chicago Law School in 1964. The editor of the Journal of Law and Economics until 1982, Coase published his final book, How China Became Capitalist (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), at age 101. In February 2013, thanks to a gift from Richard and Ellen Sandor, UChicago's Institute for Law and Economics was renamed the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics. "Among the highest aspirations of the University of Chicago is to create new fields of study that change our world for the better," said University President Robert J. Zimmer. "Ronald Coase embodied that ideal."  

George Stocking Jr.

George Stocking Jr., the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and in the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, died July 13 in Chicago. He was 84. Stocking, whose work helped solidify the history of anthropology as its own discipline, earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania's American Civilization program in 1960. He taught at Berkeley and at Penn State before joining the University of Chicago, receiving joint appointments in anthropology and history in 1968. Stocking authored or edited numerous books, including Victorian Anthropology (Free Press, 1987) and After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888–1951 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1995). Margaret Mead, writing in the journal American Anthropologist, called his first book, Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (Free Press, 1968), "beautifully and painstakingly" illuminating for redefining the history of the field. Stocking won several awards throughout his career, including a Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1994 and a Norman Maclean Faculty Award in 2011. The latter was given by the University's Alumni Board of Governors for his "influence and encouragement of decades of students, his tireless efforts in advancing their careers, and for creating and supporting a community among them."  

Robert Fogel

Robert Fogel, the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions, a faculty member of the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, and director of the Center for Population Economics, died June 11 in Oak Lawn, IL. He was 86. The child of Russian immigrants, he received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University, his master's from Columbia University, and his doctorate from Johns Hopkins. While at Cornell he changed his focus from chemistry to history and economics, partly because of warnings of an economic downturn in the latter half of the 1940s. Fogel arrived at the University in 1964 as a visiting scholar. In 1981 Richard N. Rosett, then dean of the Graduate School of Business, offered Fogel the position he held until his death. He was known for sometimes-controversial studies on subjects like the economic efficiency of slavery and how standards of living affect health and longevity. He wrote or coauthored more than 20 books, including In Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Economic History (Johns Hopkins Press, 1963) and Without Consent or Contract: the Rise and Fall of American Slavery (W. W. Norton, 1989). He received numerous honors, including the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1993 (shared with Douglass C. North), which presenter Professor Lennart Jörberg of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said was "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change."  

Andrew Greeley

Andrew Greeley, AM'61, PhD'62, a Roman Catholic priest and prolific author, died May 29 in Chicago. He was 85. Born and raised in the city, he remained a Chicagoan throughout his career, first as an assistant pastor in the Beverly neighborhood, during which time he wrote his first book, The Church and the Suburbs (Paulist Press, 1963). In 1962 he joined the independent research organization the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, where he became senior study director, with research focusing on the details of the Catholic experience in the United States. Greeley wrote more than 100 nonfiction books and 50 novels, as well as a syndicated newspaper column for 40 years. One of his novels, The Cardinal Sins (Warner Books, 1981), sold more than three million copies in English and was translated into a dozen other languages. He frequently discussed and wrote about Catholicism, including the church's treatment of women, sexual abuse, and the refusal to ordain married priests. He also taught sociology at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona. In 1983 he gave $1 million to the University to establish the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley chair in the Divinity School, a faculty chair intended for distinguished theologians.  

Shanker Shetty

Shanker Shetty, AM'62 (Economics), died in Greencastle, Indiana, April 8. He was 89. Shetty was professor emeritus of economics and management at DePauw University, which he joined as faculty in 1979. Before becoming an academic, Shetty was a personal assistant to Indian independence activist and political leader Jayaprakash "JP" Narayan. In addition to studying economics at UChicago, he earned a doctorate in the field at the University of Minnesota. While at DePauw in 1984, he led a campus committee to raise funds for starving citizens in Ethiopia. He retired in 1994 but continued to teach part time for several years.  

Robert Farber

Robert Farber AM'40 (Education), died June 19 in Greencastle, Indiana. He was 99. Farber held a near-continuous connection to DePauw University throughout his life. Attending the university as an undergraduate, he later held various roles in administration and admissions before he enlisted in the US Army, where he rose to major and received a Bronze Star for his service during World War II. After the war he returned to DePauw, serving as director of veterans affairs and assistant dean of students; he later become dean and eventually vice president of DePauw. Retiring in 1979, he remained a vice president and professor emeritus. "It's clear why generations of DePauw alumni see Bob as a symbol of the very best of DePauw—intelligent, energetic, friendly, and intensely loyal," said DePauw university president Brian W. Casey in a remembrance.