GERALD M. MEIER

GERALD M. MEIER, a leading economist and former Stanford University business and economics professor who led Wesleyan in pivotal curricular innovations during the tenure of President Victor L. Butterfield, died June 21, 2011. He was 88. An alumnus of Reed College, he was a Rhodes Scholar, studied economics at Oxford University, and received a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. Before being recruited to Stanford, he taught at Williams College and at Oxford, Wesleyan, and Yale universities. He was on the faculty at Wesleyan from 1954 to 1963, leaving the university as Chester D. Hubbard Professor of Economics and Social Science. During his tenure at Wesleyan he championed then-President Butterfield’s initiatives regarding tutorial-based learning on the undergraduate level. The author of more than 34 books, he helped to introduce the field of development economics to U.S. colleges and universities and is credited with inspiring generations of students to study the economies of less-developed countries. He lectured widely around the world and defined the role of an economist as “both a trustee of the poor and a guardian of rationality.” His 1964 textbook, Leading Issues in Economic Development, now in its eighth edition, has been translated into seven languages and is taught in classrooms worldwide. Survivors include his wife, Gretl Slote Meier, four sons, and six grandchildren.