Yeager mystique: The polymath as teacher, scholar and colleague, The

NEGLECTED PROPHETS

Introduction by the Editor

This is the first in a series of essays, to appear annually in the Eastern Economic Journal, on the contributions and the lives of important economists, less familiar than Nobel laureates, recipients of the John Bates Clark Medal, or occupants of prestigious chairs at a handful of leading universities, who have had a major influence on their graduate students and colleagues. I am pleased that the first essay in this series chronicles the many accomplishments of Professor Leland B. Yeager of Auburn University, my senior colleague at the University of Virginia in the late 1960s.

Readers of this Journal are invited to recommend candidates and authors for future essays in this series.

Leland B. Yeager is a scholar and teacher of exceptional talent - to which is added the spice of an eccentric personality. These qualities attracted to him many generations of graduate students at the University of Virginia. His lectures were highly popular, not only for their disciplined presentation and craftsmanship, but for the contagious excitement Yeager generated by his dedication to his subject. Yeager made economics seem crucial to the lives of his students. He won the admiration and respect of his colleagues, too, through the thoroughness of his research and his wideranging erudition. Indeed we shall argue that there was a strong connection between his teaching and research.

This paper on Yeager is a profile, not an essay. Its focus is Leland Yeager, the teacher, scholar and colleague. Its substance is based in part on accounts provided by students who took his courses at the University of Virginia, especially during the formation of the distinctive approach that became known as the "Virginia School." We are indebted to these students, too numerous to acknowledge by name, for their submissions. The profile, in addition, is drawn from our own experiences, since the first two authors had the privilege of being Yeager's colleagues during most of his years in Charlottesville and the third was one of his students.

Many of Leland Yeager's students were asked to provide written details of remembered experiences. To do this some had to search their memories, going back over twenty years in time. Even at the outset we were aware of a distance between observation and expression, which could make for unreliable reporting. We were reassured, however, by how often these remembrances were corroborated in almost identical accounts by more than one respondent: parallel tales of Yeager with but slight variations on common themes. Such reports seemed to us to be trustworthy.

Although some responses were sketchy, as a collection they provided ample material for this thumbnail sketch. A number of these accounts have been incorporated into the text more or less intact. These remembrances of Leland Yeager in his classroom, in his office, and at home, make immediate what time had made remote.

In addition to their remembrances, we requested copies of lecture notes that Yeager's students might have retained. That a number of students sent excellent and complete sets is indicative of the coherence with which Yeager presented his classroom lectures and of this material's lasting value.

YEAGER IN THE CLASSROOM

When students entered Leland Yeager's class, they encountered a man in conservative dress, customarily attired in a gray suit. His head was long, narrow, and rectangular, topped by sandy-colored hair that was closely trimmed on all sides including the top. Yeager was tall, but not as tall as John Kenneth Galbraith; he was lean, but not as lean as David McCord Wright; his posture was straight, indeed almost military; he was of serious demeanor and had a penetrating gaze.

The evidence suggests that Leland Yeager was the best teacher in Virginia's graduate program. Truly Virginia had other great scholars and, in their own way, they too had a major influence on students. After all, students could encounter James M. Buchanan, the future Nobel Laureate, whose courses more than anyone else's resulted in student publications in major journals; G. Warren Nutter, the controversial Soviet specialist, who questioned the exaggerated growth rates of communist economies that other Sovietologists had accepted as gospel; Gordon Tullock, who was, with Buchanan, creating a new field of study in economics that came to be called Public Choice; and Ronald H. Coase, whose work on social cost, published while he was at Virginia, was eventually to win him a Nobel prize. But it seems safe to say that none of these scholars left so indelible an imprint upon the consciousness of their pupils as did Yeager.

Much has been written about the elusive qualities that make a great teacher. In one very important sense, they are the same as those that make a great athlete. Both have natural gifts suited for their respective endeavors, without which one will never be truly great teachers and athletes, no matter how diligent the attempt.