Donald Lamberton
Donald McLean Lamberton AO (29 July 1927 – 28 November 2014) was an Australian economist. His work focused on information economics.
Early life and career
Lamberton grew up in New South Wales. Homeschooled until the age of eleven,[1] he went to work at the Bank of New South Wales in May 1942, aged just fourteen years.[2] He earned a degree in economics from the University of Sydney in 1949.[2] He then worked for the Sydney Morning Herald as a financial journalist and the Sydney Stock Exchange in research and statistics.[2]
Academic positions
In 1953, Lamberton joined the University of New England as a lecturer. With funding from the Australian War Services Canteen Trust Fund, he moved to the University of Oxford in 1957 to read for his PhD at Merton College.[1][2][3] His thesis "The Theory of Profit" was accepted in 1962 and published in 1965.[2] Concurrently, he was a senior lecturer (later, associate professor) at the University of New South Wales from 1960 to 1969.[2] In 1966 he visited the United States as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Pittsburgh and Stanford University until 1967.[2]
From 1969 to 1972, Lamberton was a professor at Case Western Reserve University and then, from 1973 to 1989, a chair in economics at the University of Queensland.[2] From 1989 to 1992 he worked in Melbourne as co-director of the Centre for International Research on Communications and Information Technologies.[1][2] Lamberton was at the Australian National University from 1992 to 2004, in their Urban Research Programme and Public Policy Programme.[2] In 2005 he moved to the Queensland University of Technology.[2]
Writing
He authored over 20 books, 60 book chapters, 40 articles, and 30 reports,[2] including:
Books edited
- Industrial Economies, 1971
- Economics of Information and Knowledge, Penguin, 1971
- The Information Revolution, 1974
- The Trouble with Technology (with Ken Boulding), 1983
- The Economics of Language, 2002
Journals edited
In 1983 he founded Prometheus[1] and was general editor for most of the rest of his life.[1]
Writing about his work
A festschrift honoring his work was published in 1999.[4] In December 2015, the journal Prometheus published a special issue of papers written by his students.[5]
Awards
In 2006 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for "service to economics, as a leading academic and researcher in the field of information economics through the multidisciplinary study of the impact of technology, information and society on economic development".[6]
References
- ^ a b c d e Macdonald, Stuart. "Don Lamberton 1927–2014." Prometheus 32.3 (2014): 223-225
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Lodewijks, John Prof (2007) "Professor of Foresight; An Interview with Donald Lamberton," Journal of Economic and Social Policy: Vol. 11: Iss. 2, Article 5.
- ^ Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900-1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 493.
- ^ Information and organization: a tribute to the work of Don Lamberton, edited by Stuart Macdonald and John Nightingale. ISBN 0444828869 Table of contents 1999, Elsevier Science Inc. New York, NY, USA.
- ^ Prometheus. December 2015, Vol. 33 Issue 4. ISSN 0810-9028.
- ^ New Adjunct Professor appointed to the Centre Archived 2013-05-25 at the Wayback Machine, Griffith University
