We have just met Helen Fisher Hohman’s husband Elmo Paul Hohman by way of his Northwestern reading list on labor problems that somehow found its way into the Harvard course syllabi archives. Helen herself went on to get a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1928 (Elmo was teaching at Northwestern) and her dissertation won the distinguished Hart, Schaffner and Marx competition over Simon Kuznets’ dissertation that was given honorable mention.
One wonders what Helen Fisher Hohman’s career path might have looked like had she been born to a later cohort. It would be nice if we could find a picture of her, maybe some descendent will stumble upon this page and share with Economics in the Rear-View Mirror.
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Helen Fisher Hohman
1916. B.A. University of Illinois.
1919. A.M. Columbia University.
1919. New York School of Social Work (completed two year program).
1920. Assistant in the economics department, Vassar College.
1921-22. Instructor of economics at Simmons College.
1928. Ph.D. University of Chicago. Thesis: The Trade Board Acts and the Social Insurance Acts in Relation to a Minimum Standard of Living in Great Britain: A Study in Attitudes toward Poverty and Methods of Dealing with It, 1880-1926.
Received first prize in the Hart, Schaffner and Marx competition in 1928 (honorable mention went to Simon S. Kuznets for his “Secular Movements in Production and Prices”)
1931. Edited Essays on Population and other papers by James Alfred Field. (Chicago: University of Chicago).
1933. The Development of Social Insurance and Minimum Wage Legislation in Great Britain: A Study of British Social Legislation in Relation to a Minimum Standard of Living. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
1940. Old Age in Sweden: A Program of Social Security. U.S. Social Security Board.
Source: Kirsten Madden. Women economists of promise? Six Hart, Schaffner and Marx Prize winners in the early twentieth century. Chapter 13 in Kirsten Madden, Robert W. Dimand (eds). Routledge Handbook of the History of Women’s Economic Thought. London: Routledge, 2018.
Also: Simmons College yearbook Microcosm 1922, p. 38.
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1940. Helen Fisher Hohman was listed as Consultant, Bureau of Research and Statistics [Social Security Board]; and Lecturer in the Division of Social Work, Northwestern University.
Source: Helen Fisher Hohman. Social Democracy in Sweden. Social Security Bulletin, Vol.3, No. 2. February 1940, pp. 3-10
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Obituary of Helen Hohman (nee Fisher)
August 2, 1894 – December 18, 1972
Mrs. Helen Fisher Hohman, 78, of 606 Trinity Ct., Evanston, former professor of economics at Northwestern University and an authoress, died yesterday in the infirmary of Presbyterian Home, Evanston.
Mrs. Hohman, who taught at N. U. during World War II, wrote the book “British Insurance and Minimum Wage Legislation in Great Britain,” which won a Hart, Schaffner and Marx prize in 1928. Survivors include her husband, Elmo; a daughter, Mrs. Rene Wadlow; and two grandchildren. Private services will be held.
Transcribed from Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1972 by Marsha L. Ensminger
Source: Genealogy Trails History Group for Washington County, Illinois.