OTAGO UNIVERSITY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20282, 4 December 1935, Page 10

OTAGO UNIVERSITY

NEW PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC! By Telegraph —Press Association DUNEDIN, December 3. Dr. Ralph W. Souter has been appointed to fill the position of Professor of Economics at Otago University in 'succession to Dr. A. G. B. Fisher, and has formally accepted the appointment by cablegram from New York, where he has been stationed for several years. Dr. Souter will commence his new duties on March 1, 1936. There were 14 applicants for the position, four from Great Britain, and 10 from New Zealand, Australia and the United States of America, and after the testimonials of all the candidates had been thoroughly examined, Dr. Souter was selected. Dr. Souter is a graduate of Otago University, but is now residing in the United States. He was born in Dunedin on February 13, 1897, and was educated here. After nearly three years service as an officer of the Bank of New South Wales, Dunedin, and a little more than three years with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Egypt, France and Germany, he became an undergraduate of the University of Otago in 1919. Three years later he graduated M.A. with first class honours in mental and moral philosophy. In 1923 he attended the teachers’ training college, receiving the A certificate that year. He also obtained second class honours in economics, and in the following year the University of New Zealand diploma in Social Science. After acting as a master at the Otago Boys’ High School in 1924-25. Dr. Souter became assistant in the departments of Philosophy and Economics at Otago University in 1926-27. In the latter year he was awarded the prize offered by the Pollok Foundation for economic research for the best criticism of the book “Profits.” He was then appointed to a two year Rockfeller Foundation Fellowship for study at Columbia University, New York, and elsewhere in the United States. This fellowship he held during 1928-29, and he was then offered an appointment as lecturer in economics in the graduate school of Columbia University, an appointment that he still holds. In 1933 he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Columbia University.