Thomas Childs Cochran

Background

Thomas Childs Cochran was born on April 29, 1902, in New York.

Education

Cochran received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

Career

Cochran taught at the New York University for almost twenty-five years before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 1950. There, he became Benjamin Franklin Professor of History, a position from which he retired in 1972, and he was also the president of the American Historical Association in that year.

Throughout his career, he examined the history of business not merely as a narrowly economic topic, but also as a cultural one. He discovered new methodological approaches and areas of research in the field of economic history.

Cochran died of a heart attack on May 2, 1999, in Haverford, Pennsylvania.

Achievements

• Cochran was known for his study of economics, which took cultural and historical aspects into consideration. His book The Age of Enterprise (1961) was called by one peer “a very important history of American capitalism”.

Works

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• book

  • Challenges to American Values: Society, Business and Religion

    (In this provocative analysis of a nation in transition, o...)

  • 200 Yrs Amern Busn

    (A history of American businesses, businessmen, and busine...)

  • Business in American Life: A History

    (Developments in business institutions since 1607 are rela...)

  • Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialization in America

    (Drawing on recent studies in the history of technology, t...)

  • Pennsylvania: A Bicentennial History

    (A distinguished historian chronicles the political, econo...)

  • The Pabst Brewing Company: the history of an American business.
  • New York in the Confederation: An economic study
  • Basic History of American Business
  • The American Business System
  • American Business in the Twentieth Century: Second edition

Personality

According to an obituary in the New York Times, Cochran described the aim in his research to write “cultural, not narrowly economic, history, to place business as a social force as important as politics, or religion”.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Cochran is definitely one of the most important economic historians of the United States during the 1940s through the 1960s." - Eric Foner

Connections

Cochran was married three times.