Irving Fisher (S&B 1888)
Skull and Bones. Professor of Political Economy at Yale University. Founder of American Eugencis Society. Yale University.
Inventor of a tent for treatment of tuberculosis sufferers (awarded New York Medical Journal prizes);
Member Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Philosophical Society, American Mathematical Society, American Sociological Society, American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality, American Ethnographical Society, American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis, Royal Economic Society (London), Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Institute International Statistique, Reale Accademia deiLincei (Rome), League to Enforce Peace, New England Free Trade League, International Free Trade League, Yale Library Associates, Connecticut Home Guard, and Church of Christ in Yale University.
On World Court Committee of New Haven, Connecticut committee of the Puerto Rico Child Feeding Committee, Connecticut committee American Historical Research Fund, advisory council Simplified Spelling Board and Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, American advisory board of League for Organization of Progress, National Committee for Mental Hygiene.
Director United Endowment Foundation, Inc., Eugenics Record Office, and League of Nations Non-Partisan Association, Inc;
Fellow Academy for the Advancement of Science and Royal Statistical Society (London).[4]
Co-chairman sixty-year Class reunion committee,
Was a frequent contributor to periodicals, lectured in many cities throughout the United States and at University of California 1917, 1919, and 1941, University of Southern California 1941, University of London School of Economics and Political Science 1921, and Geneva School of International Studies 1927; LLD . Rollins College 1932, Battle Creek College 1935, University of Athens 1937, University of Lausanne 1937; Dr. Phil Hon University of Oslo 1946;
American Eugenics Society, Vitality Records Office, and Life Extension Institute, Inc.[4]
On board of managers Friends of Boys, Inc, New Haven (member board of health 1928-29), and recording secretary National Board, Friends of Boys, Inc.[4]
Member Connecticut Junior Republic Association.[4]
1947 - Treasurer Class Fund.[4]
1944, Published World Maps and Globes (1944).[4]
1943, Devised several sundials (one adjustable for solar or local time); inventor “Likaglobe,” an icosohedral projection map.
1942, Published Constructive Income Taxation.[4]
March 1942 - Represented Federal Council of Churches at National Study Conference held at Ohio Wesleyan University.[4]
In 1939 he gave over 1,800 books and a large quantity of serials on economics to the University Library.[4]
Jul 1939 - co author of A Program for Monetary Reform. But did not result in any new legislation. (Skull and Bones steering the argument so it goes nowhere)
1935, Published 100% Money (1935).[4]
1934, Published Stable Money, a History of the Movement.[4]
1933, Published Inflation.[4]
1933, Published Stamp Scrip.[4]
1933, Published After Reflation, What?[4]
1932 to 1947 - A director Sonotone Corporation.[4]
1932, Published Depressions.[4]
1931 to 1933 - Econometric Society.[4]
1931 to 1932 - American Statistical Association.[4]
1930 - Member honorary advisory board Model Assembly of League of Nations meeting at Yale.[4]
1930 - Organizing committees International Congress on Hygiene and Demography and First International Congress on Mental Hygiene.[4]
1929 - Stock market crash and the subsequent Great Depression.
Note: Fisher equation, Equation of exchange, Price Index, Debt deflation - which attributed the crises to the bursting of a credit bubble. Initially, during the upswing over-confident economic agents are lured by the prospect of high profits to increase their debt in order to leverage their gains. Phillips curve, Money Illusion, Fisher separation theorem. Independent Party of Connecticut.
1928, Published Prohibition Still at Its Worst.[4]
In 1927 Mr Fisher helped establish the Josiah Willard Gibbs and William Graham Sumner funds at Yale.[4]
1926 - Wrote article on “Stabilization of the Dollar” in Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
1932 - Great Depression - Compensated Dollar” in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences.[4]
1923 - Treasurer Committee to Study the Tobacco Problem (1923).[4]
1923 to 1926 - Founder and Inqugural President of the American Eugenics Society.
**1921, Founder Stable Money League, Inc. (later National Monetary Association).[4]
1920 - National Eugenics Research Association.[4]
1920 - Pro-League Independents.[4]
1918, Published Health for the Soldier and Sailor.[4]
1918 - President of American Economic Association.[4]
WW1 - 1917 - National Institute of Social Sciences.[4]
WW1 - 1917 - Citizens Committee on Wartime Prohibition.[4]
WW1 - 1917 - Committee of Sixty on National Prohibition 1917.[4]
WW1 - 1917 to 1918 - Chairman Committee on selective immigration Eugenics Committee of the United States of America.[4]
WW1 - 1917 to 1918 - Subcommittee on alcohol, Council of National Defense.[4]
WW1 - 1915 to 1917 - American Association for Labor Legislation.[4]
WW1 - 1915, Published How to Live.[4]
WW1 - 1914 to 1947 - Chairman, Hygiene Reference Board.[4]
WW1 - 1914 - Vice-President United States Third International Congress of Eugenics and National Conference on Race Betterment, Battle Creek.[4]
1913 - Co-founder of the Life Extension Institute with the philanthropic goal of prolonging human life through hygiene and disease prevention[1]. Its organizational officers included many celebrity-philanthropists such as William Howard Taft (S&B 1878), Alexander Graham Bell, and Mabel Thorp Boardman but also genuine medical experts including William James Mayo, Russell Henry Chittenden, and J. H. Kellogg and a “Hygiene Reference Board” of dozens of nationally recognized physicians of that era such as Mazÿck Porcher Ravenel and Major General William Crawford Gorgas.[2]
A major project of the institute which fulfilled its mission to disseminate knowledge was publication of the book How to Live, Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science, now in the public domain.
The institute was a proponent of eugenics including sterilization of grossly “unfit” individuals:
“It depends largely upon the action of those now upon the earth, who are now making their choices of marriage, as to whether the races of the future shall be physical, mental or moral weaklings, or whether they shall be physically brave and hardy, mentally broad and profound, and morally sterling.
To summarize: There are three main lines along which eugenic improvement of the race may be attained:
(1) Education of all people on the inheritability of traits; (2) segregation of defectives so that they may not mingle their family traits with those on sound lines; (3) sterilization of certain gross and hopeless defectives, to preclude the propagation of their type.”
— Irving Fisher and Eugene Lyman Fisk, How to Live, Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science
1911, Published Purchasing Power of Money (1911).[4]
In 1910 invented visible card index system and founder in 1913 Index Visible, Inc, later Rand-Kardex, Inc, Rand Kardex Bureau, Inc, and from 1926 Remington Rand, Inc. (president and chairman board of directors 1913-20, member executive committee and board of directors 1927-47),
1909 - President Theodore Roosevelt’s (Freemason) National Conservation Commission.[4]
1909 - President Committee of One Hundred on National Health 1909 (by President William Howard Taft (S&B 1878. Freemason))
1904, National Tuberculosis Association.[4]
1902, 1928 to 1946, Director, Founder Gaylord Farm Association.[4]
1902 to 1914 - recording secretary New Haven County Anti-Tuberculosis Association.[4]
1897 - Author of “Bibliography of Mathematical Economics” in Cournot’s Mathematical Theory of Wealth (assisted also in translating and editing)
1896, coauthor: Elements of Geometry.[4]
1896, Published Logarithms of Numbers.[4]
1893 - compiler: Bibliography of Present Officers of Yale.[4]
24 Jun 1893 - Married in Peace Dale, R I, Margaret, daughter of Rowland and Margaret Anna (Rood) Hazard Children. Margaret (died November 7, 1919); Caroline Fisher Sawyer Baumann; and Irving Norton, ‘23 Mrs Fisher died January 8, 1940
1898 to 1935 - Yale University, Professor of Political Economy.
1888 - Graduated Yale, Skull and Bones Patriarch.
Died April 29, 1947, from Death due to carcinoma. in New York City. Father, Rev George W Fisher (B.A. and
Buried in Ever-green Cemetery, New Haven. Survived by one daughter, son, four grandchildren, one of whom is Baldwin Sawyer, ‘44 E , and a brother, Herbert W. Fisher, ‘98
[3] - Skull and Bones Membership List by David Luhrssen
[4] - Yale Obituary - 1946/47 - Page 16
[5] - Interesting Eugenics Interactive Tree
Comments