Guillebaud, Claude William (1890-1971) economist and academic

Person

Guillebaud, Claude William (1890-1971) economist and academic

1890-1971

Claude William Guillebaud was born on 2 July 1890 at the Rectory, Yatesbury, Wiltshire, one of twin sons of the Revd Erneste Delabere Guillebaud and his wife Mabel Louisa Marshall, younger sister of the economist, Alfred Marshall.

He was educated at Repton School (which later he served for many years as a Governor), then at Hulme Hall, Manchester, from 1907-1909. He matriculated at St John's in 1909, where he achieved First Class in the Economics Tripos Part I in 1911 and again in Part II in 1913. In 1915 he won the Adam Smith Prize and was elected into a Foundress Fellowship.

Guillebaud worked in several departments of the Civil Service during the First World War, and in 1919 was on staff of the Supreme Economic Council in Paris. He returned to Cambridge after the war and was appointed Supervisor in Economics in 1921, which he taught in College until retirement in 1957. He also was appointed Director of Studies in 1935 and College Lecturer in 1946. Re-elected Fellow under the new statutes of 1926, he remained a Fellow until his death. He was appointed an Assistant Tutor in 1926, then Tutor in 1929, and continued to hold a Tutorship until 1956, succeeding Mr Wordie as Senior Tutor in 1952. Additionally, he served as Praelector from 1926-1929.

In the University, Guillebaud was appointed a University Lecturer in Economics in 1926, Girdlers Lecturer in 1945, and Reader in Economics in 1956, and was Senior Proctor for 1933-34.

Guillebaud's report on 'The Tutorial System in St John's', a copy of which is in this archive, is a unique record by a Tutor of the Tutorial system; his obituarist in The Eagle (1972) remarked, 'It is by far the best description ever written of the Cambridge Tutorial system and as such is an important contribution to College and University history.'

Claude Guillebaud was the author of numerous papers, reports and studies, including on German economic and social policy, and his public service was diverse and international in scope: amongst his many chairmanships he headed the Committee of Enquiry into the Cost of the National Health Service (appointed 1953; report 1956), and served as Arbitrator in several significant wage disputes, including as chairman of the Committee of Inquiry on Railway Pay (appointed 1958; report 1960); he was also Arbitrator in a dispute between Northern Rhodesian copper mining companies and the African Mineworkers Union (1953). He undertook a survey of the Tanganyika sisal industry, and served for the decade following the survey as economic advisor to the Sisal Growers Association. By invitation of the British government, in 1967 he spent seven months in the Falkland Islands surveying in detail the economy of the islands. He afterwards went to Chile for three months surveying wage structure and industrial relations there on behalf of the Chilean government.

Closer to home, he served as vice-chairman of the East Anglian Regional Hospital Board, as well as on the Board of the Cambridge United Hospitals.

The careful labour of a quarter century, his massive and scholarly two-volume Variorum edition of Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics was published by the Royal Economic Society in 1961.

Guillebaud was appointed CBE in 1948 (New Year's Honours).

He married Marie-Therese Prunner ('Pauline' amongst friends) in 1918, and they had two daughters, Philomena and Claudia.

Claude Guillebaud died on 23 August 1971, aged 82.

GB 275