Robert Fogel

Robert Fogel met Enid Cassandra Morgan, an ambitious African-American woman, in 1948 and fell in love with her. The American society at that time did not approve of interracial marriages but this did not deter the couple from tying the knot in 1949. They faced considerable difficulties due to anti-miscegenation laws but remained steadfast in their commitment to each other. They had two sons, Michael and Steven. His wife died in 2007.

Fogel died on June 11, 2013, following a short illness. He was 86.

Robert William Fogel was born on July 1, 1926, in New York City, New York, US, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from Odessa. He had one elder brother. His parents were hard-working people who established several small businesses and raised their children in a happy and comfortable environment.

His brother, who was six years his senior and nine years ahead of him in school, was a major influence on the young boy during his growing years. Young Robert grew up listening to the discussions his brother would have with his classmates about the social and economic issues of the Depression.

He graduated from the Stuyvesant High School in 1944. Even though he loved literature, history and science as a teenager, he became more interested in economics with time and chose to major in history with an economics minor from Cornell University. During his college years he also became president of the campus branch of American Youth for Democracy, a communist organization.

He graduated in 1948 with a B.A. and became a professional organizer for the Communist Party, a job he held for eight years. He then proceeded to the Columbia University, where he studied under George Stigler and obtained an M.A. in economics in 1960.

He began his research career as an assistant professor at the University of Rochester in 1960. In 1963, he earned his PhD at Johns Hopkins University under the guidance of Simon Kuznets.

He accepted the job of an associate professor at the University of Chicago in 1964. He was also a visiting professor at Rochester in autumn semesters from 1968 to 1975.

His first major book, based on his PhD dissertation, was ‘Railroads and American Economic Growth’ published in 1964. In this work he gave an extremely detailed application of the important economic principle that there is a substitute for virtually everything and demonstrated that the onset of the railroad was not indispensable to the American economy.

Fogel, in collaboration with his University of Rochester colleague Stanley Engerman published the book ‘Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery’ (1974). The authors contradicted contemporary assessments of the effects of slavery on African Americans in the American South before the Civil War. The book proved to be a controversial one and generated much furor in the media.

An advocate of Cliometrics—the systematic application of economic theory, econometric techniques, and other formal or mathematical methods to the study of history—Robert Fogel was noted for using careful empirical work to question conventional wisdom. He is considered as the father of modern econometric history.