Lorie, James Hirsch 1922–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born February 23, 1922, in Kansas City, MO; died of pancreatic cancer, August 6, 2005, in Chicago, IL. Lorie was a longtime business professor at the University of Chicago. He created a stock-price database and helped to make the Chicago business school a national leader. A graduate of Cornell University, where he earned a B.A. in 1942 and an M.A. in 1945, he went on to complete his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1947. That year, he joined the faculty as an assistant professor, and remained there for the rest of his academic career. Rising to the position of professor of business administration by 1956, he was also the graduate school's associate dean in the late 1950s, director of research in the early 1960s, and founding director of the Center for Research in Security Prices from 1960 to 1975. He retired in 1992 as Eli B. and Harriet B. Williams professor emeritus. During his time as associate dean, Lorie was credited with attracting several Nobel Prize winners to teach at the university. As director of the research center, he headed the arduous task of recording the history of stock prices from 1926 until 1960. This valuable information formed indispensable groundwork for further economic research that, among other things, led to the establishment of index funds. Lorie wrote, cowrote, or edited several books in his field, including Causes of Annual Fluctuations in the Production of Livestock and Livestock Products (1947), The Stock Market: Theories and Evidence (1973), and A Half-Century of Returns on Stocks and Bonds (1977).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, August 11, 2005, section 3, p. 9.

ONLINE

University of Chicago Chronicle Online, http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/ (October 6, 2005).