Thorp, Willard Long, 1899-1992

WILLARD L. THORP

Willard Thorp was born in Oswego, New York in 1899. He was the son of Charles Nicholas Thorp (a Congregational minister) and Susan Long Thorp. Thorp spent his early life in Oswego, Chelsea, Massachusetts, and Duluth, Minnesota. He entered Amherst College in 1916. After an interruption to serve as second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1918 (in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), he graduated from Amherst in 1920. Thorp then taught economics at the University of Michigan while obtaining his master's degree in that field. Upon completion of his degree (1921), he became an instructor at Amherst College, noting later that he ended up teaching men who had been his fellow students in 1920. Between 1922 and 1924 he completed the doctoral program in economics at Columbia University and then joined the research staff at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 1927, he became one of the youngest-perhaps the youngest-tenured professor in the United States when he rejoined the Economics Department at Amherst College.

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