Gallman, Robert E.

Economic historian Robert E. Gallman joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1962. He was named a Kenan Professor in 1980 and served as chair of the Economics Department, 1990-1995. He specialized in 19th-century economic growth and antebellum Southern economic history.

Gallman co-authored with Lance E. Davis and Karin Gleiter In Pursuit of Leviathan: Technology, Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling, 1816-1906 (1997), which won the Economic History Association's Alice Hanson Jones Biennial Prize for the outstanding book on North American economic history. Gallman co-edited the Cambridge Economic History of the United States (1996- ) and the Cambridge University Press series, Studies in Economic History and Policy: the United States in the 20th century .

Gallman was a past president of the Economic History Association and the Southern Economics Association. He was also a member of the American Economics Association, the Agricultural History Society, and the Social Sciences History Association. Gallman was managing editor of the Southern Economics Journal, 1965-1969, and editor of the Journal of Economic History, 1969-1972.

Gallman's research won him fellowships from the Ford and Guggenheim foundations and grants from the National Science Foundation. The Economic History Association honored Gallman with its Jonathan Hughes Award for Excellence in Teaching Economic History. His university service included stints on the Faculty Council and the Administrative Board of the Library, and as acting chairman of the Curriculum on African and Afro-American Studies.

Gallman was born in 1926 in Bloomfield, N.J. He received an A.B. degree from Cornell University in 1948, an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1949, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1956. He taught at the Ohio State University, 1954-1962. He died on 10 November 1998. He was survived by his wife, Jane N. Gallman, two daughters, and a son.

From the guide to the Robert E. Gallman Papers, 1960-1998, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)