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Solomon at Forefront of Finance Evolution
February, 2003 Professor Emeritus Ezra Solomon, who laid the foundation for the modern under-standing of financial management with the 1963 publication of his seminal book, The Theory of Financial Management, died of a stroke Dec. 9 at age 82 in his Stanford home. Solomon, who joined the Business School faculty in 1961, was a member of President Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1971 to 1973 when the United States suspended the convertibility of dollars to gold and imposed wage and price controls. “A lot of people go to Washington and wind up thinking they can give political advice,” said emeritus professor George P. Shultz, who was secretary of treasury at the time and later secretary of state. “Ezra stuck to economic advice and agreed with the fundamentals. He was a gifted economist with real wit, and had a wonderful, candid, clear way of expressing himself.” Banking and finance professor James Van Horne recalled the influence Solomon’s 1963 book had on corporate finance theory. “In the 1940s and well into the 1950s, finance was largely descriptive as taught in most schools. Ezra helped move the field toward a more rigorous theory-based foundation—a more mathematical expression,” he said. From 1965 until the early 1970s, Solomon was the managing editor of Prentice-Hall’s book series Foundations of Finance. “Those books had an important influence in both accounting and finance,” Van Horne said, “and Ezra as the editor persuaded others, mostly at Stanford, to contribute.” Born in 1920 in Burma, Solomon began his academic career at the University of Chicago. He moved to the Stanford Business School to become founding director of the International Center for the Advancement of Management Education (ICAME). The center drew faculty from business schools in developing nations for a year of intensive management education. He also became the School’s first Dean Witter Distinguished Professor of Finance. Contributions in his memory are being made to the Ezra Solomon Faculty Fund, established at the School in 2001 through a gift from Stephen Luczo, MBA ‘84, Solomon’s former student, now CEO of Seagate Technology. |
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