Harry R. Wellman
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Harry Richard Wellman, former Acting President of the University of California (1967), was born March 4, 1899, in Mountainview, Alberta, Canada. When he was three, his family moved to a farm near Umapine, Oregon, where he grew up. After service in the Navy during World War I, he returned to Oregon where he obtained the B.S. degree from Oregon Agricultural College in 1921 and was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. That same year he became a naturalized citizen.
After graduation he was County 4-H Club agent in Malheur County, Oregon, for a year, during which time he married Miss Ruth L. Gay. Their daughter, Nancy Jane, is now Mrs. Robert D. Parmelee.
In 1924 Wellman received the M.S. degree and in 1926 the Ph.D. degree in agricultural economics from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1925 to 1934 he was a specialist in agricultural economics in the Extension Service, College of Agriculture, and from 1929 was an associate in the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.
Wellman was chief of the General Crops Section of the U. S. Agricultural Adjustment Administration in 1934-35. Returning to Berkeley, he became an associate professor of agricultural economics in the College of Agriculture and associate agricultural economist in the Agriculture Experiment Station and in the Gianinni Foundation, rising to professor in 1939. Three years later he was appointed director of the Gianinni Foundation and in 1943 was elected a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, a position he held for eleven years.
With the administrative reorganization of the University in 1952, Wellman was appointed vice president-agricultural sciences, holding this position until 1958 when he was appointed the vice president of the University. The Regents named him Acting President in January, 1967.
Wellman's extensive scholarly research has centered on price analysis, marketing and agricultural policy, particularly with respect to California fruits and vegetables. He is the author of more than 150 monographs and articles, and in 1960 was awarded the honorary degree of LL.D. by Oregon State University. He is a member of the American Farm Economics Association (president, 1952-53) and the Western Farm Economics Association (president, 1948-49).
