Charles Franklin Dunbar (1830–1900)

Although now largely a forgotten figure in the history of economic thought, Charles Franklin Dunbar (1830–1900) had two claims to fame: In 1871, he was appointed as the first professor of political economy at Harvard University, and he was instrumental in the creation of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, becoming its founding editor in 1886. Granted, Dunbar did not make any groundbreaking contributions to economic theory, being a faithful follower of the British classical economists. However, his Chapters on the Theory and History of Banking went through a number of editions, and a selection of his more prominent other contributions—many of which first appeared as articles in the Quarterly Journal of Economics—were collected in a 1904 volume entitled Economic Essays.