Wharton professor and Penn alum dies at 89

Morris Hamburg, Wharton professor and Penn alumnus, died Nov. 14 of multiple strokes at age 89.

Hamburg taught at Wharton for 46 years, retiring in 1992, but he did not leave academic life completely. He continued to teach at Wharton in a master’s degree program for executives.

Hamburg was the son of Ukrainian immigrants and grew up in North Philadelphia. After graduating from Simon Gratz High School, he took an exam for which he was awarded first place, landing him a full scholarship to Penn. When he started working at Penn in 1946, he simultaneously earned his Ph.D. after studying under Nobel Laureate Simon Kuznets. Hamburg focused his research in managerial decision analysis, forecasting and planning, economics, securities markets and industrial basic and applied research.

At the time of his death, Hamburg was an emeritus professor of statistics and operations research at Wharton.

Hamburg was an army veteran who served in Asia during WWII. He explored a fascination for Asia for most of his life, taking numerous trips to the continent, many of which were through Penn.

As reported in the Philadelphia Daily News on Nov. 17, according to his son Neil, “he was an enthusiastic and energetic teacher, whose lectures were enlivened by his sense of humor and wry wit … He jocularly referred to the lecture system as ‘the mysterious process by which the notes of the professor are transferred to the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either.’”

A Daily Pennsylvanian article written before Hamburg’s retirement in 1992 wrote that he said in an interview, “I’ve enjoyed my entire academic life. I’ve always looked at it as a way of making a life as well as a way of making a living.”

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