William S. Dietrich II. (Photo courtesy of the Dietrich Foundation).
Princeton University renamed its Economic Theory Center after industrialist and philanthropist William S. Dietrich II.
The renaming follows a bequest from Dietrich — a member of the Class of 1960 — that will endow the center. The gift will also support undergraduate and graduate student financial aid by establishing a fund for the William S. Dietrich II Scholars and Fellows.
The bequest will be distributed annually to the University from the Dietrich Foundation of Pittsburgh, which was created after Dietrich died in 2011.
Now called the William S. Dietrich II Economic Theory Center, the center was established in 2008 to support and disseminate faculty research in economic theory. It comprises 19 faculty members drawn from Princeton’s departments of economics, computer science and politics, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Dietrich’s gift is set to provide sustained funding for faculty research, seminars, fellowship programs and long- and short-term visitors from around the world. It also funds symposia such as the annual Princeton Conference on Political Economy, which gathers economists, political scientists and other scholars to address current issues in the field.
Dietrich was the chairman of Dietrich Industries, a Pittsburgh-based steel products company that his father founded. He graduated from Princeton with a degree in history in 1960 and served six months in the U.S. Marine Corps before joining the family company. He oversaw the growth of Dietrich Industries from a small scrap steel business to the nation’s largest manufacturer of light metal framing for the construction industry.
The company was sold to Worthington Industries in 1996, after which Dietrich continued to serve as a director until 2008. He used the proceeds of the sale to establish the Dietrich Charitable Trusts, which he managed. He served on the advisory council of Princeton’s Department of History.
Dietrich wrote two books, In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: The Political Roots of American Economic Decline, in 1991, and Eminent Pittsburghers: Profiles of the City’s Founding Industrialists, in 2010. He was working on a third, about the economic rise of China, when he died.
After his death, the Dietrich Foundation was formed to carry out his bequests, which included two of the largest charitable contributions in the history of higher education to Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Dietrich also made transformative gifts to other institutions in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, as well as to Princeton.
More information is online at princeton.edu.
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