Daniel Orr *60

Daniel Orr, retired professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, died at home June 6, 2012, at the age of 79.

Orr graduated from Oberlin in 1954, and received a Ph.D. in economics and sociology from Princeton in 1960. He began teaching at Amherst, after which he moved to the business school at the University of Chicago. Early in his career, his research and writing on econometrics established his reputation.

In 1966, he and a Chicago colleague were brought to the University of California at San Diego to help build an economics department at a new campus. While there, he chaired the department for 10 years, as it grew and attracted scholars, two of whom shared the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2005.

In 1979, Orr moved to Virginia Polytechnic Institute as department chair and assembled a noteworthy faculty. His last move was in 1989 to become chair of the economics department at Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, from which he retired in 1999.

Orr is survived by his wife, Mary Lee; two children; and three grandchildren. A daughter predeceased him.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.