New lecture series to honor D. Gale Johnson, distinguished economist

D. Gale Johnson

The Social Sciences Division will honor one of the University’s longest serving and most distinguished faculty members, D. Gale Johnson, by launching a new lecture series that it plans to hold annually. Justin Yifu Lin (Ph.D. ’86), a former student of Johnson’s and a professor at Peking University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, will speak at the inaugural lecture at 4 p.m., Monday, May 14, in the Social Sciences Building, Room 122.

Johnson, the Eliakim Hastings Moore Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Economics, has been a faculty member at the University since 1944. He has served two terms as Chairman of Economics, two terms as Dean of the Division of Social Sciences, and was Provost from 1976 to 1980.

He was elected president of the American Economics Association in 1999.

“Throughout his long career, Johnson has been an intellectual leader in the fields of agriculture and development economics, with special expertise in the economies of East Asia and the former Soviet Union,” said Richard Saller, the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in History and Dean of the Social Sciences Division. “Johnson has published innumerable books and articles and has served as a policy adviser to international development agencies and governments throughout the world.”

Lin met Johnson as an interpreter in China, when Johnson visited there in 1980 with the late, distinguished University economist Theodore Schultz. Lin came to the University to study and returned to China to teach after completing his degree.

In addition to his faculty positions, Lin is founding director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University.

He also is the co-author of the text Johnson uses in his class on the Chinese economy: The China Miracle: Development Strategy and Economic Reform.