Sydney Checkland

Sydney George Checkland FRSE (9 October 1916 – 22 March 1986) was a British-Canadian economic historian.

Born in Ottawa, Checkland worked at the Bank of Nova Scotia, then the Ottawa Sanitary Laundry Company, while he gained associate membership of the Canadian Bankers' Association. In 1938, he moved to England to study at the University of Birmingham, and in his final year served as President of the Guild of Students at the university. In 1941, he was elected as President of the National Union of Students, serving for only one year before becoming President of the International Council of Students.

In late 1942, Checkland enrolled at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, then was commissioned as a lieutenant into the Manchester Regiment, before becoming a tank commander in the Governor General's Foot Guards of the Canadian Army. An injury during the Normandy Landings at Falaise left him with permanent nerve damage.

After the war, Checkland joined the Common Wealth Party and stood unsuccessfully in Sheffield Ecclesall at the 1945 general election. He then returned to study for a master's degree at Birmingham, after which he took up an academic post in economic science at the University of Liverpool, where he also obtained a doctorate. In 1953, he transferred to the University of Cambridge, then in 1957 he accepted a personal chair at the University of Glasgow and founded the Department of Economic History. He quickly developed a strong reputation in a range of fields relating to economic history, and continued to write until his death in 1986. He is credited with "being instrumental" in the establishment in 1976 of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow "strong in the fields of business, banking, and urban history".

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