William A. Duerr was born in Maine on July 7, 1911. By 1930, he was living in Manhattan with his widowed mother, Virginia R. Duerr. Duerr graduated from Iowa State College before obtaining a master's degree in agricultural economics (University of Minnesota) and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1944. He served in the research branch of the U. S. Forest Service for several years and was in charge of forest surveys and economics research at the Southern Forest Experiment Station in New Orleans for six years following World War II. Duerr served as chairman of the Forestry Economics Department at the New York State College of Forestry from 1952 until 1972, when he was hired to fill Virginia Tech's Thomas M. Brooks professorship in forestry. He served in that position until 1980. William A. Duerr died on December 25, 2002.
From the guide to the William A. Duerr Papers, 1934-1987, (Special Collections, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va.)
