Edwin Nourse

Edwin Nourse
Nourse (second from right), 1949
Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
In office August 9, 1946 – November 1, 1949
President	Harry Truman
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Leon Keyserling
Personal details
Born	(1883-05-20)May 20, 1883 Lockport, New York, U.S.
Died	April 7, 1974(1974-04-07) (aged 90) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Education	Illinois Institute of Technology Cornell University (BA) University of Chicago (MA, PhD)

Edwin Griswold Nourse (May 20, 1883 - April 7, 1974) was an American economist. He served as the first chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors between 1946 and 1949.

Born in Lockport, New York, Nourse moved to a western suburb of Chicago at the age of four months, and considered himself a Midwesterner. His father worked in the city as a supervisor of public school music. His sister, Alice Tisdale Hobart, went on to become a bestselling novelist. In high school Nourse enjoyed English and history, and after spending a year at the Louis Institute, went on to Cornell University with an interest in civil engineering. In 1903 he was caught in a wave of typhoid fever that hit campus; upon his return he decided to simply get his A.B., but also took several classes at the College of Agriculture.

Following college, Nourse taught for two years in high school, spent a year on graduate studies, and then came to teach at the Wharton School, where he conceived of agricultural economics. From there he transited through the University of South Dakota, the University of Arkansas, Iowa State College, and on to the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D in 1915 for the dissertation "The Chicago Produce Market: A Study of Market Mechanism as a Factor in Price Determination". He continued to study and write about agricultural cooperation.