Gerhard Emil Leopold Tintner

Born:	09-29-1907
Faculty:	Law School
Category:	Deprivation of academic degree

Gerhard Emil Leopold TINTNER (born on September 29th, 1907 in Nürnberg, Germany, entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Vienna, died on November 13th, 1983, in Vienna), was the son of Leopold and Karoline Tintner. He studied at the Law School of the University of Vienna and graduated on December 22nd, 1930 with the academic degree 'Dr. iur.'.
He studied at the London School of Economics and received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for which he studied at Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley. He also studied at the Institut Henri Poincaré in France and at Cambridge/Great Britain.
In 1936 Tintner was associate at the Institute for Trade Cycle Research (“Institut für Wirtschafts- und Konjunkturforschung”) in Vienna and Research Fellow at the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics. Between 1937 and 1939 he worked as Assistant Professor of economics and mathematics at the Iowa State College.
In 1941 Gerhard Tintner married Leontine Roosevelt Camprubi. The couple had one son, Phillip.

In times of Nazism he was deprived of his academic degree on July 17th, 1942 with the racist argument, that he as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ('eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwürdig').  

Gerhard Tintner was promoted to Associate Professor of economics, mathematics and statistics in 1939 and Professor in 1962. Besides, he worked as consultant to the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. in 1942, as Associate of the Office of European Economic Research in New York City in 1943, and as a statistician with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington in 1944.
It took 13 years since the deprivation – and a very long time since the end of Nazism – until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on May 15th, 1955.

With a Ford Foundation grant he returned to the University of Vienna as a visiting professor in 1956/57. In 1962 he moved from Iowa State University to the University of Pittsburgh and one year later he became Distinguished Professor of Economics and Mathematics at the University of Southern California. From 1973 until his retirement in 1978 he was honorary professor and head of the department of econometrics at the Technical University of Vienna.

The main focus of Tintner's research was in economic theory and its relationship with statistics and mathematics. E.g. with his book “Econometrics” he is considered to be one of the founders of this discipline. He was visiting professor in numerous countries, was a fellow of the Econometric Society, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the American Statistical Association. He received the John R. Commons Award in 1969 given by Omicron Delta Epsilon, International Honor Society in Economics, and the honorary doctorate from the Friedrichs Wilhelm University in Bonn/Germany.

Gerhard Tintner died on November 13th, 1983, in Vienna.
His scientific legacy is administered by the Technical University of Vienna and by the Iowa State University.

Lit.: STADLER I 2004 [1988], 238, 248, 251, 267;  STADLER 2004 [1988], 399f, 402, 406, 411f; FEICHTINGER 2001, 159, 200, 243-245, 250; Gerhard Tintner Papers, Special Collections Department, Iowa State University Library.

Katharina Kniefacz