George Alexander Duncan: George Alexander Duncan was the first fulltime professor of political economy in Trinity College. His death at the age of 103 marks him as probably the world's longest-living professor of political economy. As an economist, he was in many ways ahead of his time, though some contemporaries in Ireland would have regarded him as behind it.
He was a keen follower of the Austrian school of economics inspired in particular by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. These Austrians, who believed firmly in the primacy of markets and laissez-faire, formed a central component of his lectures at a time when the Keynesian revolution was in full swing.
Consistent with his laissez-faire approach and anti-Keynesianism, he became a member of the Mont Pélérin Society in 1947, founded by Hayek in Switzerland, to combat collectivism and socialism.
Duncan, who attended meetings of this group of Hayekian followers and who was a lifelong member of the society, could have pointed out later that the 36 founding members of the society produced six Nobel prizewinners (including Hayek, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman and George Stigler), all of them espousing principles which he had taught in Trinity from the 1930s.
George Duncan was born in Ballymena, Co Antrim, in May , 1902. His early schooling was at Ballymena Academy and Campbell College, Belfast. In 1919 he was a junior entrance exhibitioner in Trinity College. A year later he became a college scholar.
In 1923 he was a double moderator in both classics and legal and political science, getting firsts and gold medals in both subject areas.
Like other economists of the period, George Duncan's undergraduate studies were not in economics, nor was his first lecturing position. In 1925 he obtained an annual appointment of lecturer in Indian law. Trinity at the time was still providing courses for the Indian civil service.
By 1928 - a year when he published articles in the Economic Journal and the Quarterly Journal of Economics - there was a change in direction when he was appointed as assistant to the professor of political economy, Charles Bastable.
Bastable, one of Trinity's most distinguished economists, having produced widely read books on public finance and international trade, had been the part-time professor of political economy for the previous 50 years.
He had also been regius professor of laws and professor of jurisprudence and international law since 1908. Duncan's affectionate tribute to him in the Proceedings of the British Academy showed his influence on him: "No student of Bastable's could escape the realisation that here was a citizen of that Platonic republic of men of intelligence, sense and goodwill to whom the artificial 'national' distinctions of our modern world are not only irrelevant but mischievous."
In 1930 Trinity College invited applications for the appointment of a fellow in economics. The applicants sat six papers, underwent a viva voce and then delivered a lecture in tail coat, boiled shirt, white waistcoat and white tie before a morning audience of Dublin society.
Despite the sartorial impedimenta, George Duncan was successful in this examination. He was promoted to professor of political economy in 1934, a position he retained until his retirement in 1967. He made an immediate impression both as an innovator and lecturer. He introduced the moderatorship in economics and political science, a course at the core of Trinity's social sciences programme.
From that point on economics became a central rather than a peripheral part of the academic programme in Trinity. Largely self-taught in economics, Duncan produced a series of brilliant analytical lectures, particularly on the work of Von Mises, Hayek, Haberler and Ohlin, with Prof RB McDowell describing them as some of the best lectures he ever heard.
Duncan was confident enough to lecture in a strong anti-Keynesian vein at a time when Keynesianism was moving into its dominant phase.
He was appointed to the commission of inquiry into banking, currency and credit in 1934. The commission provided the groundwork for the creation of the Central Bank in 1942.
During the war he worked for two years at the ministry of production in London. On his return to Trinity he became registrar (1951-52), bursar (1952-57) and pro-chancellor (1965-72).
During his period as bursar, he showed his conservative financial approach by refusing to permit the acquisition of a new Worcester china dinner set for the provost's house until Provost McConnell, a fellow Ballymena citizen, paid half the cost. He also was responsible for blocking at board level the provost's nomination of a new registrar, which provoked a mini-constitutional crisis in Trinity in 1956.
George Duncan had an acutely critical and analytical mind. His independent approach kept him out of the inner circle of policymakers: in the 1930s he had been a strong opponent of de Valera's protectionist policies and in the postwar decades he was strongly anti-Keynesian.
Some of his contemporaries believed he was teaching out-of-date principles. However, ideas that he cherished were no longer shunned when his extraordinarily long life drew to its close.
His wife, Eileen, predeceased him, and he is survived by his daughter, Margaret.
George Alexander Duncan: born May 15th, 1902; died January 14th, 2006