(The Times 29 Nov 2001)
Wright: keen to introduce new technology
IN ADDITION to serving as an economics tutor of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1953 until 1990, John Wright was Estates Bursar at the college for forty years, retiring only in 1997, when he was elected Emeritus Fellow. His own researches were at the intersection of economic theory and economic history.
In 1961 he visited business schools in North America and brought back ideas for the development of business studies in Oxford in what was to become Templeton College. When first established in the Oxford Centre for Management Studies it was headed by Wright's friend Norman Leyland of Brasenose College, with whom he had edited Oxford Economic Papers. He also brought back from America an interest in teaching through "business games" which he developed himself and played with his pupils.
Wright contributed the chapter on "The Capital Market and the Finance of Industry" to Worswick and Ady's classic, British Economy in the 1950s (1962), which included an early academic discussion of takeover bids. In 1979 he published Britain in the Age of Economic Management (1939-75) which drew heavily on official statistics while being presented in terms accessible to the general reader. His scepticism about the fruitfulness of government interventions in the economy was not incompatible with considerable sympathy for the politicians and officials with whom he had worked briefly at the Board of Trade and who frequently found themselves over-committed by leaders who had raised or followed excessively high public expectations.
His doctoral research had been on trade cycles in the 1880s. While teaching he was not only for many years the editor of Oxford Economic Papers but published several papers on the uniqueness of the internal rate of return and its generalisation as an indicator of project profitability. In his retirement he reverted to an even earlier period, travelling regularly to the Bank of England to work on its records relating to the national debt. His paper British Government Borrowing in Wartime 1750-1815 was published in the Economic History Review in 1999 and one on demand for debt instruments 1750-1820 was circulated for comment last month.
John Farnsworth Wright was born in Sheffield in 1929 and educated at King Edward the Seventh Grammar School, specialising in maths and physics in which he won a Hastings Scholarship to The Queen's College, Oxford, in 1947.
He did two years National Service in the Royal Army Education Corps after which he read philosophy, politics and economics, winning prizes in economics each year. He then joined the select band of early students at Nuffield College, Oxford, in 1952. becoming additionally a lecturer at Trinity College in 1953 and being elected to a research fellowship at Nuffield in 1954 before transferring fully to Trinity, as a Tutorial Fellow, a year later.
His commitment to Trinity was very deep but not, in a rather withdrawn man, very overtly expressed. His silences in tutorials could be a challenge to his students, especially the less well prepared, but those who broke through the barrier found a friend for life. His dedication to the college was cautiously conservative but by no means uncritical and he was keen to introduce new technology into its financial management - often pioneered by himself.
While at Nuffield he met his wife Jean, who shared the historical side of his academic interests and later, when their two sons had grown, also taught, less formally, for Trinity.
Despite spending the whole of his career in Oxford John Wright did not forget his northern roots. For a number of years he and Jean had a cottage at Sleights on the North York Moors near Whitby-an excellent base for bracing walks and informal industrial archaeology.
Wright was a devoted teacher of economics, a meticulous scholar and a man of unchallengeable integrity. He is survived by his wife and sons.
John Wright, Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, was born on October 15, 1929. He died on November 19, 2001, aged 72.
John Wright was born in Sheffield in 1929 and educated at King Edward VII School where he gained a Hastings Scholarship to Queen's in 1947 to read P.P.E. He was one of the early students at Nuffield College and retained his links there until he became a Tutorial Fellow in Economics at Trinity College in 1955. In 1961 he visited business schools in North America and brought back ideas for the development of business studies in Oxford in what was to become Templeton College. He also brought back from America an interest in teaching through `business games' which he developed himself and played with his pupils. His doctoral research had been on trade cycles in the 1880s, and in retirement he spent much time working on the records of the Bank of England from 1750 to 1820, some of the results of which were published in the Economic History Review in 1999. Whilst a Fellow of Trinity, he was, however, better known for his work on the twentieth century. He contributed the chapter on `The Capital Market and the Finance of Industry' to Worswick and Ady's classic British Economy in the 1950s (1962), which included an early academic discussion of takeover bids. In 1979 he published Britain in the Age of Economic Management (1939-75) which drew heavily on official statistics while being presented in terms accessible to the general reader. His scepticism about the fruitfulness of government interventions in the economy was not incompatible with considerable sympathy for the politicians and officials with whom he had worked briefly at the Board of Trade and who frequently found themselves over-committed by leaders who had raised or followed excessively high public expectations. Despite spending the whole of his career in Oxford, John Wright did not forget his northern roots. For a number of years he and his wife Jean, whom he had met at Nuffield, had a cottage near Whitby, an excellent base for bracing walks and informal industrial archaeology.
(Dec 2002)