Baxter, William T. 1906-2006

(William Threipland Baxter)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born July 27, 1906; died June 8, 2006. Accountant, educator, and author. The first person to become a full-time accounting professor in the United Kingdom, Baxter was a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1929 and trained at the accounting firm of Scott-Moncrieff, Thomson, and Shiells before becoming a chartered accountant. Continuing to learn his profession as an assistant to Edinburgh University professor William Annan, Baxter subsequently won a fellowship to study at Harvard University. He then moved to South Africa, where he joined the University of Cape Town as a professor of accounting from 1937 to 1947. During this time, he also completed a Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh in 1945. Returning to England, he joined the LSE in 1947 as its first full-time accounting professor. Baxter was at the forefront of the movement to make accounting an accepted university-level discipline in England. Many of his students would become professors at Oxford and other British institutions, and by the time he retired in 1973, accounting programs existed in all of England's major learning institutions. Baxter was also an important figure in the field for his work teaching the integration of accounting and economics principles; interestingly, his introduction of the concept of compound interest in accounting classes was considered revolutionary at the time. In addition, he was interested in the history of accounting, about which he would write in his book The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724-1775 (1945). After retiring, he remained a professor emeritus at the LSE until his death. Among his other works are Studies in Accounting Theory (1962), written with Sydney Davidson, Accounting Values and Inflation (1975), and Accounting Theory (1996), which he edited.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), August 7, 2006, p. 44.