North, Douglass C. (Douglass Cecil)

• 1920: Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• 1941: Worked for one summer with Dorothea Lange, photographer; her husband, in Economics Department at the University of California, convinced North to study economics
• 1942: Received B.A. from University of California, Berkeley
• 1942 - 1946 : Served in the U.S. Merchant Marines
• 1950 - 1979 : Professor at University of Washington
• 1952: Received Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley
• 1956 - 1957 : Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; his major quantitative study of the balance of payments of the United States from 1790 to 1860 led to publication of first book in 1961
• 1960 - 1966 : Co-editor of the Journal of Economic History
• 1961: Publication of book, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790 to 1860
• 1961 - 1961 present : Director, Institute of Economic Research at Washington University
• 1966: Publication of book, Growth and Welfare in the American Past: A New Economic History
• 1966 - 1967 : Became interested in European economic history and spent the year in Geneva as a Ford Faculty Fellow
• 1971: Publication of book, Institutional Change and American Economic Growth (with L. E. Davis)
• 1972: Elected President of the Economic History Association
• 1973: Publication of The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (with R. P. Thomas) Visiting Director of the Centre de Recherche Historique at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris
• 1979: Professor, Rice University
• 1981: Publication of book, Structure and Change in Economic History
• 1981 - 1982 : Professor, University of Cambridge, England
• 1983: Moved to Washington University in St. Louis, where he created the Center in Political Economy
• 1990: Publication of book, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance
• 1993: Awarded Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (jointly with Robert W. Fogel)
• 1996: Elected as Fellow of the British Academy
• 1997: Advisor, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World, the World Bank
• 2003: Awarded Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humanities, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri

From the guide to the Douglass Cecil North Papers, 1942-2006 and undated, (David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University)