Philadelphia

Joseph Wharton, a native Philadelphian, was a leader in industrial metallurgy who built his fortune through the American Nickel Company and Bethlehem Steel Corporation. As Wharton's business grew, he recognized that business knowledge in the United States was only taught through an apprenticeship system, and such a system was not viable for creating a wider economy during the Industrial Revolution.[4] After two years of planning, Wharton in 1881 founded the Wharton School of Finance and Economy through a $100,000 initial pledge, making it the first business school established in the United States.[5] (ESCP Europe, established in 1819, and a few other business schools were established in Europe prior to Wharton's founding.[6]) The school was meant to train future leaders to conduct corporations and public organizations in a rapidly evolving industrial era. Wharton was quoted as saying that the school was meant to "instill a sense of the coming strife [in business life]: of the immense swings upward or downward that await the competent or the incompetent soldier in this modern strife".[4] From the founding of the school, he defined that its goal was "to provide for young men special means of training and of correct instruction in the knowledge and in the arts of modern Finance and Economy, both public and private, in order that, being well informed and free from delusions upon these important subjects, they may either serve the community skillfully as well as faithfully in offices of trust, or, remaining in private life, may prudently manage their own affairs and aid in maintaining sound financial morality: in short, to establish means for imparting a liberal education in all matters concerning Finance and Economy".[7] The school was renamed the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, in 1902, and formally changed its name to simply, Wharton School, in 1972.[8] Early on, the Wharton School faculty was tightly connected to an influential group of businessmen, bankers and lawyers that made up the larger Philadelphia School of Political Economy.[9] The faculty incorporated social sciences into the Wharton curriculum, as the field of business was still under development. Albert S. Bolles, a lawyer, served as Wharton's first professor,[10] and the school's Industrial Research Unit was established in 1921.[11] Wharton professor Simon Kuznets, who later won the Nobel Prize in Economics, created statistical data on national output, prices, investment, and capital stock, and also measured seasonability, cycles, and secular trends of these phenomena. His work laid out what became the standard procedure for measuring the gross national product and the gross domestic product, and he later led an international effort to establish the same statistical information for all national economies.[12][13] Professor Lawrence Klein, who also won the Nobel Prize in Economics, invented the field of econometrics, which combined economic theory with mathematics, providing another way to test theories and predict future economic trends.[12] Wharton professor George W. Taylor is credited with founding the academic field of study known as industrial relations.[14] He served in several capacities in the federal government, most notably as a mediator and arbitrator. During his career, Taylor settled more than 2,000 strikes.[15] In 1967, he helped draft the New York State civil service law which legalized collective bargaining in that state but which also banned strikes by public employees—legislation widely known today as the Taylor Law.[16] Wharton professor Wroe Alderson (1898–1965) is widely recognized as the most important marketing theorist of the twentieth century[17] and the "father of modern marketing".[18][19] Wharton professor Paul Green is considered to be the “father of conjoint analysis” for his discovery of the statistical tool for quantification of market research.[20] Wharton professor Solomon S. Huebner is known widely as "the father of insurance education." He originated the concept of "human life value", which became a standard method of calculating insurance value and need. He established the goal of professionalism in the field of insurance, developed the first collegiate level program in insurance and chaired the Department of Insurance at Wharton, and contributed greatly to the progress of adult education in this area.[21] Wharton professor Daniel M. McGill was widely regarded as the “dean of the pension industry”,[22] whose research contributed to shaping the modern retirement system both in the public and corporate sectors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wharton_School_of_the_University_of_Pennsylvania

• published: 28 May 2015
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