“Path of Secretarial Initiative”: The Labor of Three Secretaries in the Marc Nerlove Papers

Gloria Feigenbaum and Marc Nerlove, circa 1972-1973, photograph, 3.5 x 5 in., box 1, folder Feigenbaum, Gloria, 1972-1973.

Gloria Feigenbaum is pictured here with her typewriter to one side. Typing was a major job duty for all secretaries, as professors rarely did their own at this time. (One set of class notes prepared by another professor even begins with an apology for his lack of skill after he was forced to do his own typing.) Nerlove’s secretaries had to not only be able to type text but also complex mathematical formulas and calculations quickly and accurately.

Nerlove, Marc, David M. Grether, and José L Carvalho. Preface to Analysis of Economic Time Series: A Synthesis, pg. XV. New York: Academic Press, 1979.

In the preface for Analysis of Economic Time Series, Feigenbaum and Stina Hirsch are thanked for typing and Hirsch for assisting with revisions of the manuscript (paragraph four). Secretarial support was important to Nerlove throughout his career, and this can be seen in later as he negotiated terms of appointment at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Maryland, including secretarial support as one provision and then negotiating specifics like rank and source of funding.

Gloria Feigenbaum to Marc Nerlove, 1973, box 1, folder Feigenbaum, Gloria, 1972-1973.

As Feigenbaum and Nerlove prepare to part ways (her for Tucson and him for Northwestern University), she finally reveals to him just how much she had left unsaid until now for the sake of their working relationship. Called out for his perfectionism and micromanagement by an experienced secretary 11 years his senior, his handwritten reply in blue at the top of page one indicates that he took this feedback well.