Harold T. Davis (1892-1974)

Director: February – September 1937; Advisor: September 1937 – 1939

A.B., 1915 and Ll.D., 1949, Colorado College; A.M., Harvard University, 1919; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1926

Harold T. Davis was associated with the Cowles Commission since its beginning, spending several months each year in the Commission's laboratory while it was at Colorado Springs and serving as a consultant throughout the balance of the time. From February to August 1937, he was acting research director.

He was professor of mathematics at Indiana University, 1923–37, and at Northwestern University from 1937, becoming full professor and chairman of the Department of Mathematics in 1942. Davis was a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He was an associate editor of Econometrica, and served in the same capacity for Isis and the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.

He studied in the field of political statistics and submitted several books for publication. Many of his papers, abstracts, and reviews were published in American Mathematical Monthly, Annals of Mathematical Statistics, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation, National Mathematics Magazine, School Science and Mathematics, and Science.

He authored the following books: The Volterra Integral Equation, 1930; Philosophy and Modern Science, 1931; Tables of the Higher Mathematical Functions, 1933, Vol. II, 1935; Elements of Statistics, 1st ed. (with W. F. C. Nelson), 1935; General Mathematics, 1935; Theory of Linear Operators, 1936; Elements of Statistics, 2nd ed. (with W. F. C. Nelson); College Algebra, 1940; Theory of Econometrics, 1941; Mathematical Monograph, 1941; The Analysis of Economic Time Series, 1941 (Monograph 6); Political Statistics, 1948; Essays in History of Mathematics, 1948; Differential Equations and Mathematical Physics, 1949; Quantitative Aspects of the Action of Carcinogenic Substances, 1951; and Quantitative Aspects of the Carcinogenic Radiations, 1952. 

[Abstracted from A Twenty Year Research Report 1932–1952]

Of interest: Richard William Farebrother, “A Memoir on the Life of Harold Thayer Davis (1892-1974),” The Manchester School (September 1999), 67(4): 603-610