University Times

Economics professor emerita Janet Goodrich Chapman, an expert in Soviet economics, died Dec. 5, 2012, in Maryland. She was 90.

Chapman came to Pitt as a visiting associate professor in economics in 1964. She was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1966 and advanced to full professor in 1967. She chaired Pitt’s economics department 1978-1985 and retired in 1992 as professor emerita.

Chapman earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Swarthmore in 1943. Her graduate work in political science was completed at Columbia, where she earned a master’s degree and a certificate from its Russian Institute in 1951 and a PhD in 1963.

She served as an analyst with the National War Labor Board in 1943 and later was an economist for the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Her best-known monograph, “Real Wages in Soviet Russia Since 1928,” was published in 1963 based on research conducted as a consultant for RAND Corp. She later consulted for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Retired history department faculty member Bob Donnorummo, a colleague in Pitt’s Center for Russian and East European Studies, said Chapman’s book was among very few written on the topic of wages in the Soviet Union, adding that it was a well-respected and widely read work.

Chapman was instrumental in the development of Pitt’s Russian and Eastern European studies programming, heading the University’s Russian and East European studies committee and later directing its Russian and East European studies program.

Donnorummo said he admired Chapman’s ability to apply data on Soviet economics that, at the time, was obscure and difficult to obtain.

“She was a well-trained economist with a high degree of common sense,” he said. She was able to use her expertise and skills to provide a balanced analysis in an area where interpretations of data could be used either to praise or criticize the Soviet Union, Donnorummo said.

He said Chapman also was a role model for other young women in the male-dominated economics field. “She had a positive impact on other younger female scholars,” he said, adding that she never played gender as a trump card. Her abilities in economics and her chosen area of Russian studies came naturally, he said.

Chapman was a skilled administrator who would set policy then lead with a hands-off style, Donnorummo said. An effective writer, Chapman successfully wrote and re-wrote proposals for federal funding, he recalled.

“She was deeply involved and very much in love with the University,” Donnorummo said. “She was a realist, but saw it in a very positive light.”

Chapman was preceded in death by her husband, retired Pitt political science faculty member John W. Chapman III. He died in 2008 at age 85.

She is survived by daughter H. Perry Chapman and grandchildren Alexandra and Martin Niemczewski.

—Kimberly K. Barlow