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INTRODUCTION
Maurice Moonitz began his life in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 31, 1910, the son of an immigrant from the Baltic coast of Russia and a second-generation American mother. Music was high on his list of youthful (and adult) interests, but he turned in a more business-oriented direction during his two years in the University of Cincinnati's cooperative work program. One year in a factory machine shop and another as a bank bookkeeper must have broadened his perspective considerably. Upon dropping out of the university in 1929 "for financial reasons," his taste for adventure led him and a friend to drive an old Model T Ford to California. When the car "gave up the ghost" near Sacramento, he was able to land his second bookkeeping job. Two years of work at that level led to higher aspirations and enough savings to return to education. He recalls that he chose the University of California at Berkeley over Stanford on economic grounds. He was awarded a B.S. degree from the College of Commerce in December 1933, which was a poor time to go on the job market. Not having the "right ethnic background" for a position in public accounting, he landed his third bookkeeping job, this time at the Federal Land Bank in Berkeley.1
Moonitz' success as a student (Phi Beta Kappa) may explain his return to the Berkeley campus within a few months as a graduate student and teaching assistant to Professor Henry Rand Hatfield. That return led to a master's degree in 1937 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1941. His early teaching experience also included full-time posts at Santa Clara University (1937-1942) and Stanford (1942-1944).
Public accounting did not remain permanently closed to Dr. Moonitz, perhaps because of a wartime labor shortage. In 1944, he commenced a three-year term with Arthur Andersen & Co. in San Francisco before accepting a tenured teaching position at "Cal." Those three years in practice, together with another year while on leave of absence from the university in the 1950s, may have piqued his interest in practical issues facing the profession-an interest that shows up so clearly in his choices of research topics.
A review of Maurice Moonitz' professional career shows a remarkably balanced mastery of the areas commonly...