John Habakkuk

Sir Hrothgar John Habakkuk (13 May 1915 – 3 November 2002) was a British economic historian. Within the University of Oxford, he served as Chichele Professor of Economic History at All Souls College (1950–67), Principal of Jesus College (1967–84) and Vice-Chancellor of the University (1973–77). He was also President of the University College of Swansea (1975–84).

Biography Habakkuk was born in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, the son of Evan and Anne Habakkuk. He was named "Hrothgar" after Hroðgar in Beowulf, which his father was reading at the time of his birth. However, he came to be known as John when he started to travel to the United States, and when he was knighted he found it easier to call himself "Sir John" than "Sir Hrothgar". His surname was assumed by a seventeenth-century forebear after the prophet Habakkuk, it being a Welsh custom at that time to take patronymics from the Bible.

He was educated at Barry County School and St John's College, Cambridge (scholar and Strathcona Student, starred He began to study for a PhD under John Clapham, but his progress was interrupted by the Second World War. and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (1977–84). He retired in 1984 and was Ford Lecturer in the following year. and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1966.

Habakkuk married Mary Richards (died 2002), whom he met during the war and who later studied history at Cambridge, in 1948. They had a son and three daughters. He died, from renal failure and myelodysplasia, at the house of one of his daughters, Little Orchard, Scot Lane, Chew Stoke, in Somerset, England, on 3 November 2002.

Publications John Habakkuk, Marriage, debt, and the estates system: English landownership 1650–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) John Habakkuk, Population growth and economic development since 1750 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1971). John Habakkuk, Industrial organisation since the Industrial Revolution (Southampton: University of Southampton, 1968). John Habakkuk, American and British technology in the nineteenth century: the search for labour-saving inventions (Cambridge University Press, 1962). John Habakkuk et al., Lectures on economic development=Études sur le développement économique (Iktisat Fakültesi nesriyatı no. 101, Istanbul: Faculty of Economics, Istanbul University, and Faculty of Political Sciences, Ankara University, 1958). H.J. Habakkuk, 'English Landownership, 1680–1740', Economic History Review 1st series 10.1 (February 1940), pp. 2–17.