Ann Fetter Friedlaender


Ann Fetter Friedlaender was a noted American economist. Friedlaender held appointments in two MIT departments as Professor of Civil Engineering and Economics for the class of 1941. Dr. Friedlaender was seen as an authority in the field of public finance, with a specialty in transportation studies. The first woman to head one of MIT's five schools, she served as Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science.

Biography

Ann Fetter Friedlaender was born in Philadelphia in 1938. She graduated with a B.A. degree in economics from Radcliffe College in 1960 and married Stephan Friedlaender in December of the same year. Ann had two sons, Lucas Ferdinand and Nathaniel Mark. In 1964, she completed her Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduation, Friedlaender stayed a year in Finland as a Fulbright lecturer.
Friedlaender returned to the USA and taught at the Boston College as a lecturer, receiving a promotion to an assistant professor, and then a promotion to professor between the years of 1965 and 1974. In 1972, Friedlaender became a visiting professor at the MIT Department of Economics. In 1974, she was appointed as a professor in MIT's Department of Economics and Civil Engineering. She was appointed chair of the Economics Department in 1983, becoming the first woman to head an academic department at MIT. She was a named Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences during 1984 to 1990. Friedlaender was also held positions offcampus as a director of the Rand Corporation and of Conrail, a member of the American Economic Association, the chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, and an associate editor of Transportation Science for 14 years.
Friedlaender died of cancer at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston on October 19, 1992. Her family established a Professorship after her death.

Contribution

Friedlaender was a scholar who published many professional and academic articles, influential books, and several monographs. One of the most well known publications she wrote was The Interstate Highway System, which quickly made her an authority in the field of transportation economics at the age of 27.
Her later work, on the public finance and regulations of the public transportation system, became fundamentals in these fields, and her analysis was considered future regulation and policy-making. Her use of econometric modeling on the transport system was innovative at the time.
Friedlaender's work with Spady, Transport Regulation: Equity, Efficiency, and Competition in the Rail and Trucking Industries, raised a lot of attention along with significant policy implications. Also, Friedlaender was very invested in improving learning materials for students. Friedlaender joined John F. Due as the second author and edited the fifth and later editions of Government Finance: Economics of the Public Sector in 1973, helping to improve the classic textbook published in seven editions from 1954–1981.The then provost, Professor John M. Deutch, described her as "one of the best deans to have graced MIT in its history," adding, "She is a person of enormous wisdom and her accomplishments for the school have been just as enormous."
Aside from being productive in the academic field, Friedlaender was a member of the American Economic Association and the chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. There, she actively provided help and was committed to inspiring more women to choose academic careers and attend graduate school.

Appointments