Transformational Education > Distinctive teachers
Audio Clip – Keith Butters on Robert Schlaifer
Transcript
Bob Schlaifer came to the School in probably somewhere around '46 to '48, on my recommendation, indirectly, I guess to Dean David, because the aviation research had as one of its projects the need for a history of the development of the aircraft engine. And Bob, among his many fields of academic expertise, he was originally a historian, ancient historian, Greek classic history.
He and I had been tutors together in Kirkland House, and knew each other very well there. And he was just coming out of doing underwater sound theoretical physics research, and having moved from history to, I think, math to economics to research and physics and so on. And I suggested as a long shot that he might be available, and if they wanted a trained historian, he was that.
And he was hired for that project, and was kept on with the School. And all his statistical work and so on was subsequently developed. So his coming to the School had nothing to do with that.
J. Keith Butters