W. Duane Evans Collections

Professor Evans was born on June 10, 1909, at Watertown, New York, the son of a Presbyterian minister who later became a chaplain in the U.S. Army. He studied chemical engineering at Clarkson College, receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in 1930.

He began his career as an engineer at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington. However, as the federal government moved to deal with the social and economic problems of the thirties, he became involved with the research activities of a variety of agencies including the National Recovery Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Department of Justice, and ultimately, in 1939, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In addition to his formal duties, he found time in a busy schedule to teach and write on statistical techniques and the application of mathematics to economic problems. He made substantial contributions to the statistical theory of sampling.

His affiliations and honors from the 1940s on indicate the scope and quality of his efforts. He served the Bureau of Labor Statistics as chief of the Productivity and Technological Development Division, as chief of the Division of Interindustry Economics, as chief economist, chief statistician and, after 1962, as associate commissioner. He was on the faculty of the American University from 1947 to 1964 as adjunct professor of economics, on the faculty of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate School from 1940 to 1964, and on the Faculty of Economic and Political Science, Cambridge University, during 1953-54. He served as a consultant to the Anglo-American Productivity Council and was a member of the U.S. delegation, International Statistical Institute, in Rome in 1953, in Rio de Janeiro in 1955, in Stockholm in 1957, in Tokyo in 1960, and in Ottawa in 1963. He received the Rockefeller Public Service Award in 1953 and the award for Distinguished Service, U.S. Department of Labor, in 1953. Professor Evans was a fellow of the Washington Academy of Sciences, the American Statistical Association, and the A. A. A. S.; he was a member of the American Economic Association, the Econometric Society, and the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth. He published numerous articles and reports on input-output data and projections, on productivity and the effects of technological change, and on statistical methodology. The interindustry study of the U.S. economy for 1947, done with Marvin Hoffenberg, is a model for later search in this area.

In 1964 Professor Evans retired from U.S. government service and joined the faculty of Cornell University with a joint appointment in the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Sciences. He taught courses in mathematical economics for the Department of Economics and courses in statistics for ILR. He brought to bear on his teaching the wealth of experience that he had gained in working for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and attempted to instill in his students a feeling for the valuable contributions that can result from the judicious use of statistical methods in practical problems. His presentations were enhanced by a wry sense of humor. He was most helpful to graduate students in all stages of their training and was especially helpful to those whose backgrounds in statistics and mathematics were deficient. He was a valuable member of many ILR committees, especially the Graduate Committee, in which he served several terms as chairman. He contributed significantly to recruitment and to the development of academic programs in the Department of Economics.