Richard Charles Mills

Richard Charles Mills (8 March 1886 – 6 August 1952) was an Australian economist and academic. He was head of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Sydney for 23 years, and a key member of several Australian government instrumentalities. or Mooroopna where Samuel was head teacher for 25 years, then Coppin Street, East Malvern.

He was educated at Melbourne's University High School, Melbourne and the University of Melbourne, where he studied law, history and political economy, gaining his Bachelor of Laws in 1909 and Masters in 1910. Mills was, in 1907, the first president of the Students' Representative Council, Melbourne University.

In 1912 he entered the London School of Economics and Political Science, and graduated with a D.Sc. in 1915. His thesis, on the Wakefield scheme for developing South Australia, was later published as The Colonization of Australia 1829–42.

Career Military He enlisted with the British Army in December 1915, and after officer training served in France and Belgium with the 61st Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, and suffered from a gas attack at Armentières in April 1918, when he was mentioned in dispatches. and Chairman of the Commonwealth Committee on Uniform Taxation in 1942. Mills was appointed chairman of the Universities Commission and director of the new Commonwealth Office of Education in 1945 and was chairman of the Interim Council of the Australian National University between 1946 and 1951; when the first University Council was formed. Mills was appointed a member of its Governing Council in 1947.

Mills was a member of the NSW Branch of the League of Nations Union, serving on academic committees to improve public opinion about the League.

In 1924 he help to found the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand.

Mills was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1936. In 1957, the first R.C. Mills memorial lecture was held in his honour. In 1949, the University of Sydney named the first permanent building for the Faculty of Economics 'The R.C. Mills Building' in 1949. It remains to this day; and the Australian National University has named a boardroom in the Chancelry Building in Mills' honour.

Other interests Mills was a keen sportsman; he excelled at Australian Rules football, tennis and cricket, and played the latter two well into middle age.

Mills enjoyed poetry, the theatre and reading. He was the author of several anonymously published short stories, and was an expert bridge player. In the 1930s The Sunday Sun published a humorous column, Diary of a Doctor who was Told, He wrote the introduction to the Everyman edition of Wakefield's A Letter from Sydney (London, 1929). He wrote the entry on William Hearn for the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1932). He contributed many articles to the Economic Record, journal of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand. Mills, R. C.; Sir Walker, Ronald. Money (1935), underwent 13 editions.