E. Wight Bakke

Edward Wight Bakke (November 13, 1903 – November 23, 1971) was an American sociology and economics professor at Yale University who achieved prominence in the field of industrial relations. He was a Sterling Professor, Yale's highest level of academic rank, and served as director of the Yale Labor and Management Center from its founding in 1945 until its dissolution in the late 1950s. The author, co-author, or co-editor of thirteen books, Bakke made major contributions to the study of unemployment and organizational theory.

Bakke was born and raised in Onawa, Iowa. He was of half Norwegian and half English descent; his father worked as a shoe merchant. He went to Onawa High School where he was president of his senior class among other activities.

He attended Northwestern University as an undergraduate, where he won a $2,000 national prize in oration. He graduated with a B.A. degree in philosophy in 1926. He was married to the former Mary Sterling in 1926 and they would have three children.

He went on to graduate studies at Yale University, first attending Yale Divinity School during 1926–29 where, although himself a Quaker, he served as an Episcopal pastor. Under the advice of sociologist Albert Galloway Keller he switched from philosophy to social science. In 1931 he studied unemployment in the United Kingdom during the early phase of the Great Depression, living on the dole in a working-class area of Greenwich. He received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1932.

Bakke joined the faculty of Yale in 1932 where he became a fellow at the Jonathan Edwards College and taught sociology from 1932–34. He then shifted fields and became an assistant professor of economics in 1934. He subsequently became professor of economics in 1938 then received the Sterling Professor designation in 1940. Within the interdisciplinary Yale Institute of Human Relations he was Director of Unemployment Studies during 1934–39. He was also the main social economist who consulted to the Social Security Board from 1936–39.

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