Edward Dana Durand, 1871-1960.

Economist and statistician of the American Institutionalist School

Originating from Romeo, Michigan, Edward Dana Durand was the son of a Presbyterian deacon and pharmacist. While Dana was still young, the family moved to stake a claim in the western frontier town of Huron, South Dakota.  After preparation at Yankton College, E. Dana Durand enrolled at Oberling College in 1889, where he came across fellow student J.R. Commons, and became radicalized into the "social gospel" progressive liberalism.  After receiving his BA, from Oberlin in 1893,  E. Dana Durand enrolled for graduate study at Cornell University, where he came under the tutelage of economist Jeremiah W. Jenks and statistician Walter F. Willcox. He received his Ph.D. degree from Cornell in 1896, with a dissertation on New York City finances.  Like many of the "new generation",  Durand took the obligatory academic tour in Germany, studying in Berlin under Adolf Wagner, before returning to the US to take up a job as assistant professor at Stanford University in California in 1898.

Durand served as secretary of the US Industrial Commission (1900-1902), assembling the first team of policy economists to work in Washington DC.  Durand was at Johns Hopkins (?).  After the UCIS, Durand served briefly as an instructor at Harvard, before being appointed in 1903 to the US Census Bureau, and subsequently served on the US Board of Corporations from 1903 to 1909.  President Taft appointed Durand as director of  the 1910 Census.. In 1913, E. Dana Durand became professor statistics at the University of Minnesota.  In 1917 he US Food Administration, where he was sent to Europe.  He served also as an advisor to the Polish govenrment, and later for the US Department of Commerce and US Tariff Commission.

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