ABSTRACT

Robert Emil Gallman was Kenan Professor of Economics and History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was born in 1926 in Bloomfield, New Jersey and died in Chapel Hill in 1998. He was educated at Cornell University (B.A., 1948) and at the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., 1949; Ph.D., 1956). Before moving to UNC in 1962 he taught at The Ohio State University (1954-1962); he held visiting positions at several other institutions, including a fellowship at Nuffield College, Oxford (1972-3). He was President of the Economic History Association (1976) and of the Southern Economic Association (1978). A conference held in his honor in 1990 resulted in a Festschrift edited by Thomas Weiss and Donald Schaefer, American Economic Development in Historical Perspective (Stanford, 1994). In 1998 he was awarded the EHA’s Hughes Prize for excellence in teaching economic history. Gallman’s interlocutor for this “interview” was W H who, over the course of a visiting year at UNC in 1990-1, discussed with Gallman a variety of issues and questions. Bob Gallman responded to Bill in the form of a letter, which we reproduce as his interview. Hutchinson adds:

Bob Gallman is the kindest and one of the most helpful people I have ever met. Most conversations with Bob are peppered with stories that he relates with great care and detail, usually ending with a surprise or impact that was not totally expected by the listener. These stories are often drawn from the vast stock of mystery novels that Bob has read. Having previously read his work, I first met Bob at the joint EHA and World Congress of Economic History meetings at Bloomington, Indiana in September of 1968. (For many cliometricians, that conference generated its share of interesting tales.) That was the first of many times that Bob’s encouragement would serve as an incentive for me in my own work. In his letter Bob relates many situations where he has either collaborated with others or enabled them to generate first-rate research of their own.