Edith Hirsch (economist)

Edith Hirsch was born in Berlin, Germany to Adolph and Flora Jarislowsky.[2] She was the third of five siblings.[3] Hirsch received a bachelor's degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1925.[1] She met Julius Hirsch at the childhood home of Albert Einstein's wife, who was a good friend of her mother.[2] They married in 1927 and their only child was born in 1928.[2] In 1933, they emigrated to Copenhagen, and in 1941 they moved to the United States.[3] Hirsch earned a master's degree in social science in 1943 at the New School for Social Research in New York.[1] She and her husband taught at the school throughout the 1940s and 50s.[4] She worked as a consultant for many companies with her husband. In 1961, Julius Hirsch died and Edith closed their consulting firm,[1] although she continued publishing papers.[5] She continued working into her later years. She moved to Washington in 1989 and died on January 7, 2003.[1]

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Hirsches made several economic forecasts for the United States Department of Agriculture and for newspapers. Edith sometimes had to publish under Julius's name.[1] These predictions involved fiscal expenditure forecasts,[6] food price forecasts[7] and surplus and deficiency forecasts.[8][9] In 1965, Hirsch helped George Tietz edit his family's memoirs of owning the Hermann Tietz supermarket chain.[10] After her husband's death, Edith continued working, publishing many works including Food Supplies in the Aftermath of World War II in 1993 [1]