4 days ago
Marina von Neumann Whitman Dies at 90; Carved Path for Women in Economics
Marina von Neumann Whitman, an expert in international trade who in 1972 became the first woman to be appointed to the White House Council of Economic Advisers and who later was one of the few women to join the executive leadership at General Motors, died on May 20 in Concord, Mass. She was 90.
Her son, Malcolm Whitman, said her death, in a hospital, was from complications of pneumonia.
Dr. Whitman was just 36 when President Richard M. Nixon nominated her for his three-person economic council, making her the highest-ranking woman in his administration.
'As a woman, she will be outnumbered on the council two to one, but not in terms of brains,' the president said in the Oval Office with Dr. Whitman and her family by his side. (The council's other members at the time were Herbert Stein and Ezra Solomon.)
Dr. Whitman was an academic economist by training — she taught at the University of Pittsburgh and later at the University of Michigan — but she alternated her work in the classroom with extensive stints in the public and corporate sectors.
Before joining the Council of Economic Advisers, she had worked for it as a staff economist and then served on the president's board overseeing price controls.
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