Robert Ralph Neild (10 September 1924 – 18 December 2018) was a Professor of

Economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

. Robert Neild was born in Hertfordshire in 1924, and was educated at Charterhouse School and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

. Elected a Fellow of Trinity in 1971, he has also served on the Secretariat of the UN Economic Commission for Europe and has held posts in the UK Cabinet Office,

HM Treasury His Majesty's Treasury (HM Treasury), occasionally referred to as the Exchequer, or more informally the Treasury, is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for developing and executing the government's public finance policy and ...

(its first Economic Advisor in the 1960s) and at the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

Center for International Studies, India Project. A former Deputy Director of the

National Institute for Economic and Social Research The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), established in 1938, is Britain's oldest independent economic research institute. The institute is a London-based independent UK registered charity that carries out academic researc ...

, he was in 1966 appointed as founding Director (with

Alva Myrdal Alva Myrdal ( , ; née Reimer; 31 January 1902 – 1 February 1986) was a Swedish sociologist, diplomat and politician. She was a prominent leader of the disarmament movement. She, along with Alfonso García Robles, received the Nobel Peace ...

and then

Gunnar Myrdal Karl Gunnar Myrdal ( ; ; 6 December 1898 – 17 May 1987) was a Swedish economist and sociologist. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money a ...

as chairman) of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and has held other influential posts in commerce and on advisory bodies. In that same year, he was appointed by Harold Wilson as a member of the Fulton Committee on the Civil Service. Widely published on issues concerned with economics and peace studies, Neild was also the author of ''The English, The French and the Oyster''. Written on his retirement and spurred by a holiday in France, this is a historical-economic exploration of relative prices of oysters in Britain and France and the political and economic origins of these. He also wrote ''Public Corruption: The Dark Side of Social Evolution'' (Anthem Press). Among memorable quotes, Neild, rebuffing Blair’s claims about Saddam Hussein's alleged biological weapons, wrote: 'To say that the UN inspectors found "enough to have killed the world's population several times over" is equivalent to the statement that a man in his prime can produce a million sperm any day, therefore he can produce a million babies a day. The problem in both cases is that of delivery systems.' He died on 18 December 2018 at the age of 94.Neild
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References

1924 births 2018 deaths British economists Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Members of the Fabian Society People educated at Charterhouse School {{UK-economist-stub