Categories
AEA Amherst Columbia Economists Germany Johns Hopkins Smith

Columbia. Short biographical note on John Bates Clark at age 52

 

Today’s post adds to the virtual clipping file of relatively obscure biographical items for John Bates Clark. The turn of the century volumes edited by Joshua L. Chamberlain, Universities and Their Sons, serve as a who’s who with an academic twist and the source of this early-through-mid-career biography for the great John Bates Clark.

Pro-tip: At the bottom of this post you can click on the keyword “ClarkJB” to summon all the John Bates Clark related posts here at Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

_________________________

Other Biographical postings for John Bates Clark

From the Smith College yearbook (1894)

Columbia University Memorial Minute (1938)

_________________________

CLARK, John Bates, 1847-

Born in Providence, R. I., 1857; studied at Brown for two years; Amherst for two years, graduating in 1872; studied abroad at Heidelberg University for one and a half years and at Zurich University one-half year; Professor of Political Economy and History, Carleton (Minnesota) College, 1877-81; Professor of History and Political Science at Smith College, 1882-93; Professor of Political Economy at Amherst, 1892-95; Lecturer on Political Economy, Johns Hopkins. 1892-94; Professor of Political Economy at Columbia since 1895.

JOHN BATES CLARK, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Political Economy at Columbia, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, January 26, 1847. His parents were John Hezekiah Clark, a well-known manufacturer of Providence, and Charlotte Stoddard Huntington, a granddaughter of General Jedediah Huntington of New London, Connecticut. He received his early education in the public schools of his native place. In 1865 he entered Brown, spending two years in study there, and later entered Amherst. During an interval of absence from this College he engaged in the manufacture of ploughs, and was one of the founders of the Monitor Plow Company, of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He retired from active business in 1871, and returned to Amherst, graduating in 1872. He then went abroad and studied for a year and a half at the University of Heidelberg, for a term at the University of Zurich, and for a short period in Paris. He returned to America in 1875 and, two years later, became Professor of Political Economy at Carleton College. He retained this position for four years, and then came to Massachusetts to take the Professorship of History and Political Science at Smith College. He was with Smith in this capacity for eleven years, until, in 1893, he was made Professor of Political Economy at Amherst College. From 1892 to 1894 he was also Lecturer on Political Economy at Johns Hopkins. He left Amherst in 1895 to take a Chair of Political Economy at Columbia, and has since been in charge of the department of Economic Theory of the University. In 1893 and also in 1894 he was elected President of the American Economic Association. Professor Clark has written a number of monographs and articles on economic subjects, and a book — The Philosophy of Wealth — which presents new theories. He also published in collaboration with Professor F. H. Giddings, The Modern Distributive Process, and is now about to publish a second work on Distribution [The Distribution of Wealth; A Theory of Wages, Interest and Profits (1899)]. He is a member of the Century and Barnard Clubs. Professor Clark married, September 28, 1875, Myra Almeda Smith of Minneapolis. They have four children, three girls and a boy.

Source: Universities and their sons; history, influence and characteristics of American universities, with biographical sketches and portraits of alumni and recipients of honorary degrees, Joshua L. Chamberlain, ed., Vol. II (Boston: R. Herndon Company, 1899), p. 423.

Image Source: Same.