Harvard Business School

Few HBR editors proved as durable as Harry R. Tosdal, a graduate of Harvard's economics department who taught at MIT and Boston University before joining the HBS faculty in 1920.

Tosdal, ably assisted by Ruth Norton, spent literally thousands of hours between 1922 and 1939 shaping the magazine's content and editorial policies. Tosdal did not shy away from controversy: a 1930 article by HBS graduate R. Minturn Sedgwick—"Investment Advice"—argued that the advice of many investment companies was something less than impartial, many because they weren't paid adequately for their services.

The banking community was not pleased. One member of the School's Visiting Committee, N. Penrose Hallowell, scolded Dean Donham for giving exposure to someone "trying to build up his business by damning the other fellow."

Donham took full responsibility for the article, and for the Review in general. "The only alibi I can of," he wrote to Hallowell, "is to ask, did you ever put out an issue of securities that turned sour? This isn't much of an alibi, I know."