Fogel elected to philosophical society

Robert Fogel, the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of American Institutions in the Graduate School of Business, was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society at its annual meeting in April.

Fogel is one of 42 resident members and five foreign members elected to the society this year. He received the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science with Douglas North of Washington University for “having renewed research in economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.”

Fogel is the author or co-author of 19 books, including the two-volume Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, which pioneered statistical methods to analyze the way the American slave system operated. He also has several books in progress, including The Escape from Hunger and Early Death: Europe, America and the Third World: 1750-2100, which will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2001.

Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, the American Philosophical Society is the oldest learned society in the United States. Its members comprise five classes of scholarly inquiry: mathematical and physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts, learned professions and public affairs. Former members include John James Audubon, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and 12 American presidents.