Robert Hiester Montgomery
| Robert Hiester Montgomery | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 21, 1872 Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, USA |
| Died | May 2, 1953 (aged 80) Coral Gables, Florida |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields |
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| Spouse |
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Robert Hiester Montgomery (September 21, 1872 – May 2, 1953) was an American accountant and educator, and co-founders of what is today the world's largest accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Montgomery was a two-term president of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Montgomery was the author of numerous books on auditing and taxation including Auditing Theory and Practice, a bestseller originally published in 1912 which is still in print. He was successful in three professions despite his lack of formal education, having not even completed high school.
Montgomery quit school at the age of 14 and went to work in order to help out his family. In 1889 he got a job as an office boy at an accounting firm in Philadelphia. There he learned accounting and was made partner after seven years. Two years later in 1898, Montgomery and three of his colleagues, William M. Lybrand, Adam A. Ross Jr. and his brother T. Edward Ross, formed Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery. Two years later the firm opened an office in New York City under Montgomery's management. In his spare time Montgomery learned law. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1904. Montgomery established his own law firm, Robert H. Montgomery, Attorney at Law, and worked on many difficult tax cases for clients. In 1905 Montgomery led a reorganization of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). He created the Journal of Accountancy (then called the American Journal of Accounting). The first issue contained his Professional Standards. He was president of the AICPA for two two-year terms, first in 1912 and again in 1935.
Next, Montgomery also got into the field of education by developing a curriculum in accounting for Columbia University. He was hired as Columbia's first accounting professor in 1910 and stayed there until 1939.
Montgomery saw the need for a book on auditing. In 1912 he wrote Auditing: Theory and Practice. This was the first American book on auditing. For the seventh editions two other authors joined him and the book was retitled Montgomery's Auditing. After Montgomery's death the eighth edition was published in 1957 by two other authors. It is still in print and is now in its 12th edition.
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