E. Roy Weintraub

Professor of Economics

Roy Weintraub was trained as a mathematician and began his career as a mathematical economist. In the 1980s he reconstructed his research and teaching activities to focus upon the history of the interconnection between mathematics and economics in the twentieth century. That work, in the history of economics, helped shape the understanding of economists and historians: his General Equilibrium Theory (1985), Stabilizing Dynamics (1991), Toward a History of Game Theory (ed.) (1992) and How Economics Became a Mathematical Science (2002) charted the transformation of economics from a historical to a mathematical discipline. In recent years his work has turned more self-consciously historiographic, resulting in edited volumes on The Future of the History of Economics (2002) and Economists Lives: Biography and Autobiography in the History of Economics (2007).  A former President of the History of Economics Society, his books and articles have been variously translated into Japanese, Chinese, French, Greek, Spanish, Hungarian, and Italian. Currently he is Associate Editor of the History of Political Economy, and Co-Editor of the book series Science and Cultural Theory. In 2011 he was named a “Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society”.

He has held visiting positions at the University of Hawaii, UCLA, the University of Rome, the University of Bristol, the University of Venice, and the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan. He has been one of the few economists honored by a fellowship year at the National Humanities Center. At Duke he was Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Economics from 1972 to 1983, Chair of that department from 1983 to 1987, Acting Director of the Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences in 1987, Director of the Center for Social and Historical Studies of Science from 1995-1999, and has twice chaired the Academic Council, Duke’s faculty senate. From 1993 to 1995, he served as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He has served terms on the Advisory Committee on Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure, the Academics Priorities Committee, the Faculty Compensation Committee, and has chaired the President's Advisory Committee on Resources. He served for many years as a pre-major advisor and a teacher of first-year seminars, and has been Director of the Honors Program for the Department of Economics, and Faculty Fellow in the former Edens Federation for Residential Life. In 1992 he won the Howard Johnson Foundation Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award.

A native of the Philadelphia area, Professor Weintraub received his A.B. degree in mathematics from Swarthmore College, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the Duke University faculty in 1970 following a first academic position at Rutgers University.