Francis Amasa Walker - Legacy

Legacy

Beginning in 1947, the American Economic Association recognized the lifetime achievement of an individual economist with a "Francis A. Walker Medal". The quinquennial award was discontinued in 1982 after the creation of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences effectively made it superfluous. The medal was awarded to Wesley Clair Mitchell in 1947, John Maurice Clark in 1952, Frank Knight in 1957, Jacob Viner in 1962, Alvin Hansen in 1967, Theodore Schultz in 1972, and Simon Kuznets in 1977.

Following his death, alumni and students began to raise funds to construct a monument to Walker and his fifteen years as leader of the university. Although the funds were easily raised, plans were delayed for over twenty years as MIT also made plans to move to a new campus on the western bank of the Charles River in Cambridge. The new Beaux-Arts campus opened in 1916 and featured the Walker Memorial housing a gymnasium, students' club and lounge, and a commons room.

Despite his prominence and leadership in the fields of economics, statistics, and political economy, Walker's Course IX on General Studies was dissolved shortly after his death and a seventy year debate followed over what was the appropriate role and scope of humanistic and social studies at MIT. Since 1975, all MIT undergraduate students are required to take eight classes distributed across the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences before receiving their degrees.