Harrison Richard Wellman was professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and became acting president of the University of California in 1967.
Background
Richard was a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Puritan Thomas Wellman, who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony about 1640. Harry"s family was living just north of the Canada – United States border when he was born. His mother died less than a year after he was born.
Education
University of California, Berkeley.
Career
Early years
Wellman served in the United States Navy through World War I after his father died in 1917. Wellman became a naturalized citizen of the United States and graduated from Oregon Agricultural College in 1921. Wellman was an agricultural economics specialist in the College of Agriculture cooperative extension service from 1925 until 1934.
In 1929, he became an associate in the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.
He returned to Berkeley in 1935 after serving a year in Washington, District of Columbia, as chief of the General Crops Section of the United States Agricultural Adjustment Administration. He was an associate professor of agricultural economics in the College of Agriculture and an associate agricultural economist in the Agriculture Experiment Station.
He became a full professor in 1939 and was appointed director of the Giannini Foundation in 1942. He served as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 1943 to 1954.
Wellman became the first vice president of the University of California in 1958 after serving since 1952 as vice president-agricultural sciences.
He served as acting president of the University in 1967. Wellman Halls on both the University of California Berkeley campus and Davis campus are named for Harry Wellman.