The New Student's Reference Work/Walker, Francis Amasa

Walker, Francis Amasa, American statistician and political economist, was born at Boston, Mass., July 2, 1840, and died there Jan. 5, 1879. Graduating from Amherst in 1860, he took part in the Civil War and in 1865 rose to the brevet-rank of brigadier-general of volunteers. He was wounded at Chancellorsville, and for a time was an inmate of Libby Prison. In 1871-2 he was United States Indian commissioner; he was also chief of the bureau of statistics at Washington and superintendent of the 9th and 10th United States censuses. From 1873 to 1881 he was professor of political economy in the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, and in 1881 became president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Boston. In 1898 he acted as United States commissioner to the international monetary conference at Paris, and in the same year was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and made an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society of London. His published writings include The Indian Question; The Wage-Question; Money; Money, Trade and Industry; Land and Its Rent; Political Economy; Bimetalism; and a History of the Second Army-Corps.