Daniel Orr

Daniel Orr, retired UCSD Professor of Economics, passed away at his home in Frankfort, Michigan, on June 6, 2012. Born in New York on May 13, 1933, Dan spent his early childhood in New York, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Graduating from Oberlin College in 1954, he pursued his studies in Economics at Princeton University, receiving a PHD in 1957. His teaching career began at Amherst College and moved to the University of Chicago Business School, during which time his children Rebecca and Matthew were born.
Professionally, Dan is most famous for a model named after him, "Miller and Orr Model", which deals with finance and monetary economics. In 1966 Dan moved to the newest campus of the University of California at San Diego to start building an economics department. It was here where daughter Sara was born. Dan became Chair in 1969 and played a major role in the department's steady growth in size and reputation. Moving to Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia, in 1978, Dan assumed the Headship, where he successfully assembled a top-rated economics faculty. His final academic position as head of the Economics Department at the University of Illinois led him to retirement age and a move to Frankfort, Michigan, where living adjacent to Crystal Downs Golf Club gave him full rein to pursue his love of golf.
A loving father and husband, he maintained his love of reading and listening to music. A colleague describes him as "...a Renaissance Man for modern times," a fitting image for one who contributed so much to scholarship in his professional life as well as to the needs and development of both his immediate and extended family, colleagues and friends.