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Up for sale a RARE! "Economic Historian" John Ulric Nef Hand Signed 3X5.5 Card.
ES-1763B
John
Ulric Nef, Jr. (1899–1988)
was an American economic historian, and the co-founder of the University of Chicago's Committee on Social
Thought. He was associated with the University of Chicago for over
half a century, and co-founded the Committee there in 1941. Nef was born in
1899, the son of chemist John Ulric Nef. He was a
native Chicagoan. He graduated from Harvard University in
1920. He finished a PhD degree at the Robert Brookings Graduate School
in Washington, D.C. (a
precursor of the Brookings Institution) in
1927. He served at Swarthmore College's
faculty for a year. He joined the University of Chicago's
faculty in 1929 as an assistant professor of economics. fter joining the faculty at Chicago in 1929,
he was associated with the university for over half a century. He became
professor of economic history there
in 1936. He also served as a visiting professor at French universities, Institut d'études politiques and
the Collège de France, and also lectured at the universities of
Belfast and Houston.
In 1941 Nef co-founded the Committee on Social
Thought at Chicago along with Frank Knight, Robert
Redfield, and Robert M. Hutchins (who
was then president of the University of Chicago). It is an elite
interdisciplinary graduate department at Chicago. He served as executive
secretary and also as chairman (1945–1964) of the Committee. He brought a
number of distinguished people he had encountered in his travels abroad such
as Marc Chagall, T. S. Eliot, Igor Stravinsky, and Jacques Maritain to the Committee. Nef went on to become
a foremost economic historian. His largest domain of interest was the Western Europe's economic, cultural, and military history
since the end of the 15th century. He was involved in the study of the
comparative economic histories of Britain and France; his most intense being
the French economic history.
His early work on the coal industry of Britain and the early Industrial Revolution in
Britain during the 16th and 17th century is particularly important. His work
indicated that the Industrial Revolution was a long-time evolutionary process. He
was also one of the first economic historians who paid serious attention to
technology.
