Reynolds, Lloyd (George) 1910–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born December 22, 1910, in Wainwright, Alberta, Canada; died April 9, 2005, in Washington, DC. Economist, educator, and author. The former chair of the Yale University economics department, Reynolds was often credited with turning a failing department into a world-class scholarly center. A 1931 graduate of the University of Alberta, he earned his master's degree at McGill University in 1934. He then studied for his Ph.D. at Harvard University, graduating in 1937. He taught at Harvard for three years and then joined the Johns Hop-kins University faculty in 1939. After becoming a U.S. citizen in 1940, Reynolds served as a chief economist for the War Manpower Commission during World War II. He left Johns Hopkins in 1945 to work for Yale University, chairing the economics department during the 1950s and working as founding director of its Economic Growth Center from 1961 to 1967. As department chair, he more than doubled the size of the faculty, adding a staff of bright economists, some of whom later became Nobel Prize winners. Though William F. Buckley would famously criticize the left-leaning philosophy of the department in a 1951 book, Reynolds vigorously and successfully defended the direction he led his department. He retired from Yale in 1980. As a scholar, one of Reynolds's greatest achievements was creating the new discipline of labor economics, which he discussed in his 1949 book, Labor Economics and Labor Relations (eleventh edition, 1998). Among his many other publications are The Structure of Labor Markets (1951), The Three Worlds of Economics (1971), and The American Economy in Perspective (1981; second edition, 1987).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Washington Post, April 14, 2005, p. B7.

ONLINE

Yale Bulletin & Calendar Online, http://www.yale.edu/opa/ (April 22, 2005).