HALL OF DISTINGUISHED GRADUATES
DR. DOUGLASS C. NORTH ’43
Professor Douglass C. North entered the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in 1942. having received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Berkeley. He graduated a year later from Kings Point and went to sea for three years as a deck officer. In 1952, Professor North earned his Ph.D at the University of California at Berkeley and began his distinguished thirty-two year teaching career as a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1972 he was named the President of the economic History Association and served as the editor of the Journal of Economic History for five years. In the fall of 1979 e was named the Peterkin Professor of Political Economics at Rice University and the Pitt Professor at Cambridge University in England in 1981. He was appointed Luce Professor of Law and Liberty in the Department of Economics at Washington University in the fall of 1983 and the Director of the Center of Political Economy from December 1984 through June 1990.
In April 1985 he was appointed editor of the Cambridge Series of books and monographs on "The Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions." Professor North's appointments at Washington University in St. Louis followed his service as Director of the Institute for Economic Research for five years and Chairman for twelve years. in 1987 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor North has lectured at most major American and European universities and many Asian universities. He is the author of over fifty articles and eight books. His most current research has focused on the formation of the political and economic institutions and the consequences of these institutions of the performance of economics through time.
In 1993 he received the Nobel Peace Prize in Economics. In 199 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and was installed as the Olin T. Spencer Professor in Arts and Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis