Economics Prof Mansfield dies at 67

Edwin Mansfield died of cancer yesterday morning at his home. Almost until the final hours of his life yesterday morning, Economics Professor Edwin Mansfield was devoted to a teaching career that defied the law of diminishing marginal utility. The 67-year-old professor, who taught at the University for 22 years, died of cancer in his home in Wallingford, Pa., yesterday morning. Mansfield stopped teaching three weeks ago, and his Economics 1 students were told just last week that their substitute would take over for the rest of semester. "That he was teaching until three, four weeks ago shows how dedicated he was," Economics Department Chairperson Mark Rosenzweig said. Students in Mansfield's class, who were notified of the professor's death via e-mail yesterday, said they were surprised by his abrupt death. "[Mansfield] didn't really seem like he was run down by disease, he just seemed like he was getting on in years," said College freshman Daniel Carlin, one of the Mansfield's students this semester. But most of Mansfield's students remembered how he had sat behind a desk throughout class and wrote notes on the board ahead of time. They took his frailty and his strained voice as a sign the professor was past his peak. In his heyday, Mansfield wrote an Economics textbook that sold over 1 million copies, according to Rosenzweig. College freshman David Caldwell said that Mansfield "was a little intimidating, in how long he's been on the faculty and the fact that he had been teaching out of his own textbook, so he impressed me." "But he was fun," Caldwell added. "He was like a grandfather. I couldn't hear him and he didn't care, he told great stories and had an incredible mind." In recent years, Mansfield, who received a doctorate in Economics at Duke University, focused his research on industrial organization and technological change in relation to the economy. After conducting research with the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mansfield published a series of papers on technology development in 1995 and 1996. He was also responsible for developing many of the Economics Department's graduate courses, according to Rosenzweig. "He was a stalwart of the [Economic] principles course," Rosenzweig said. Many students who took Mansfield's class emphasized his "grandfatherly" good-naturedness and his obvious brilliance, saying they felt "honored" to be in his class. "In general, he seemed like he was an amazing man," said College freshman Brendan Moriarty, who is currently in Econ 1. "I would've loved to have gotten to know him better, to invite him to a 'take your professor to dinner' thing? and just sat down and had a conversation with him," he added. Caldwell described the professor's low tolerance for quitters and strong personality despite his advanced age. "I didn't have a strong background in calculus, so I approached him after class and he just said 'to hell with you! We'll see what you can do'!" he said. "It made me want to work harder -- I knew that I should either put up or shut up, and I did not want to quit the class."

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.