| 1 | Name: | Dr. Andrew F. Brimmer | |
| Institution: | Brimmer & Co. Inc. | ||
| Year Elected: | 1976 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 302. Economics | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1926 | ||
| Death Date: | October 7, 2012 | ||
Noted economist, academic and business leader Andrew F. Brimmer was born in Newellton, Louisiana in 1926, the son of sharecroppers who had been driven off of the land by boll weevils. Upon graduation from a segregated high school, he moved to Bremerton, Washington with an older sister and worked in a navy yard as an electrician's helper. In 1945 he was drafted into the Army, and after completing his military service in 1946, enrolled at the University of Washington, earning a B.A. in economics in 1950. In 1951 he received his M.A. and won a Fulbright grant to study in India. He subsequently earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1957 and went to work for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as an economist. During that same time, he traveled to Khartoum, Sudan, to help the country establish a central bank. During the Kennedy administration, Dr. Brimmer became assistant secretary of economic affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce, serving until 1966. That same year he began an eight-and-a-half year term on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. While there, he became the first African American governor of the Federal Reserve. In 1974 he left to take a post at Harvard University, where he stayed for two years. When he left, he formed his own consulting company, Brimmer & Co. In 1997, he began serving on the Federal Reserve and in 1999 became vice chairman. Dr. Brimmer was elected to the Washington Academy of Sciences in 1991, largely as a result of his published works on the nature and importance of central banking systems. He served as vice president of the American Economic Association and president of the Eastern Economics Association. He was president of the North American Economics and Finance Association and served on a number of other corporate boards of directors. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1976. Andrew F. Brimmer died October 7, 2012, at the age of 86 in Washington D.C. | |||