Ely Devons

Ely Devons (29 July 1913 – 28 December 1967), an economist and statistician, was born in Bangor, Gwynedd North Wales, lived most of his life in Manchester and died after a long illness at St Thomas Hospital in London. He was survived by his wife, the concert pianist Estelle Wine, and their three children.

As a child Devons’ family moved throughout Britain and he was schooled at Hanley High School, Portsmouth Grammar School, and North Manchester Grammar School. From 1931 to 1934, Devons attended the Victoria University of Manchester where he read Economics, Politics and Modern History and would graduate with first class honours. After graduating he received a research fellowship to undertake an MA specialising in Economics and produced a well-received thesis on productivity that was published in The Economic Journal.

He worked as an economic assistant in Manchester at the Joint Committee of Cotton Trades Organisations over the period 1935–1939 and was brought into the Ministry of Supply, as a statistician working on Cotton Control, soon after the outbreak of the Second World War. Within a year he was encouraged to join the War Cabinet’s Central Economic Intelligence Service (the precursor to the Economic Section and Central Statistics Office) by John Jewkes and Harry Campion, two former colleagues from Manchester. Devons began work in Whitehall in March 1940 and joined a tight group of former academics and economists – a group that also included Lionel Robbins, Norman Chester, Alec Cairncross, Evan Durbin, D.G. Champernowne, and Harold Wilson – drafted into the British war effort. Between 1940 and 1945 he became the first Chief Statistician for the Central Statistics Office, then Director of Statistics, and finally the Director General of Planning, Programmes and Statistics with the Ministry of Aircraft Production.

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